Thoughts on Joshua and Joseph for twins?

Too matchy matchy. Sounds naff.

I agree about the post. My brother and father are both Mr J .... (different names beginning with the same letter) and when my brother was living at home it was sometimes difficult working out whose post was whose. Fortunately as they were at different stages in life it was often obvious from the source of the letter. As your twins will be the same age I think it will be far too confusing, not to mention same date of birth.

Joshua is nice. Only trouble is it seems very popular at the moment. We know four little Joshuas.

Joseph is a bit 'biblical' in my view. But I know lots of people think it's a lovely name, so that's just me.

Other J suggestions if you're determined to have 'matching' names - James, John, Jonathan, Jason, Jethro, Jenson, Jacob, Jack, Jeremy, Jamie.

Another mum of identical twins here. Lovely names, but honestly too match for twins. Other people will struggle to tell them apart anyway, so names with the same initial will inevitably make that even harder. Really important for them to feel they have something that distinguishes them from one another, and non-match names is a great place to start

As others have said, same initial, same surname, same date of birth and address will lead to all kinds of annoying admin cock ups over the years. I wouldn't

Pick your favourite name and then find another name with a different first initial.

Seriously.

Not as bad as the non twin siblings called Tim and Tom but rubbish for post, uniform returning if you wanted to just use first initial, identities.

Why the same initial?

I’d choose a different name to go with Joseph. Maybe Joseph and James, Joseph and Jacob or Joseph and Jonathan?

I know a Joshua who is called Joe. You could end up with 2 Joes !

Joseph and Joshua are too similar - both start with Jos, both begin with a J and both are 6 letters long.

Their post will be addressed to Mr J Surname. They already share a birthday and surname, such similar first names could cause admin errors.

I would swap one out for a similar name e.g. David, Thomas, Ethan, Luke, Isaac, Matthew.

If they don't both need to be biblical then maybe something like Henry, Edward, William or George.

I think it's nice to give twins complimentary names i.e. with a similar feel, but these are too matchy IMO. Joseph and Matthew for example are both biblical and classic names and compliment each other nicely, but are different enough not to be twee.

No, they're too similar.

We have twins - Joshua and another name beginning with J. Not deliberate but they were the only two names we could agree on after they were born early and we still hadn’t decided.

In most cases it would be fine but where we have a lot of medical involvement it’s a massive pain in the bum - because they have the same birth date and same initial stuff often gets put on the wrong notes, or the wrong file is looked up and then there’s confusion over appointments etc.

I do love their names though.

Too similar. They will get mixed up, as in who's who? It's very important for twins' mental health to have individual identities.

I was also going to mention the letters thing.

My brother's friend was called John after his dad, his mum was called Joan - lots of opening the wrong letters / bank statements etc.

I just wouldn't have same initial. They'd both be Master/Mr J Surname. Could get confusing for letters etc.

The names themselves are fine though.

I wouldn’t.

I used to babysit for a family with children called Jo, Jake, Josh and Jordan. It was fecking nightmare - they were ‘good’ kids but calling for one of the 4 in a rushed or emergency situation was impossible. It used to go “j,j,j, aargh. NO. Stop” awful.

Too similar

Really great combination
The names compliment each other well but aren't too matchy matchy

How about a different name beginning with J? DH is Joshua and it's always shorted to josh , we re thinking of naming our son Jack so it ll be similar but with their middle name their intials will be different.

I wouldn't do it, it will be confusing later when they receive mail, official forms etc. I taught a pair of twins whose names were so similar County Offices phoned school to check if the name had been put on the roll twice in error.

I think it also takes away their individuality as people a bit. Friends will probably get their names mixed up (tbf this can happen anyway).

Such a daft thing to do. You’ll have two children with the same initial, surname, date of birth living at the same address and going to the same school etc.

Give them a bit of individuality and avoid matchy matchy names.

Ahh these names are fab twin names

(FWIW I know 2 Joshuas who go by Joe.)

Aside from that however, I do think they are a little too matchy matchy. I have identical twin girls and before we knew they were both girls (before anyone comments - they were DCDA twins so no evidence they were identical until we had DNA testing done post birth) we had picked names for 2 boys and a boy & a girl.

Our boys names both started with E and we had so many reservations about that. We stuck on them in the end because they were still very distinct names and would never have been shortened to anything like each other. (In fact - in the shortened versions only one started with E as the other name would have taken the second half of the name.)

Our favourite girls name alongside our favourite boys name was more problematic though as they both had the same ending when shortened and we really ummed and ahhed about it.

I have 4 DC, and without a doubt, the twins names are said together more than any other. I do think 2 matchy names would be a pain in the ass. My two are ID and best friends. They choose to be in the same class at school, have the same friend group and often like to coordinate their outfits (although I think this is more a girl thing than a twin thing), but their distinct names mean a lot to them. I do think it would be harder to form distinct identities with such similar names.

(I do recognise the problem though as we really debated giving up one of our favoured names if we’d had one of each, as the names just didn’t work together. And fwiw - I love both Joshua and Joseph!)

Nope. Lovely names but they will cause confusion on every database they are ever on including the NHS and whatever your LEA uses for schools data.