A reader named Jamie isn’t expecting twin girls. If she were expecting twin girls, though, she and her husband wonder, “Would it be fair, suitable, weird, to name the girls Ivy and Lily?” Jamie says:
I’m not a fan of the matchy twin names – Kara and Kerri, John and Jack, but my husband and I both really like Ivy and Lily. Ivy is just a beautiful name that we love, but Lily pays tribute to his mother whose name is Lilian. Honestly we were thinking about using Liliana and shortening it to Lily. So – do Ivy and Lily qualify as matchy twin names since they are both flowers, and would it be weird for one of the girls to have a “longer more involved name” like Liliana (but shortened to Lily), and the other one just be Ivy (since I can’t think of anything Ivy would be short for).
I do think Ivy and Lily are too matchy, but it’s not because they’re both botanical. It’s because they’re both botanical, they both end with the same sound, they both have the same rhythm, they both feature the same vowels (in the same order), they both have very few letters…they’re similar in many ways. For me, that’s too close.
I think Ivy and Lily could work if they were both nicknames. Ivy could be derived from I-V names like Ivana, Ivette and Ivonne. Maybe even Olivia, Livia or Vivian. Another option would be first-middle combinations like Irene Veronica or Isabella Virginia for the initials I. V.
What’s your take on Ivy and Lily?
