Twinsy

“I never saw such twinsy twins before,” she said; “do you know yourselves apart?”

A boy I knew once put the puzzle in this way: “You would think that twins would be more truly twins than they are. But when they seem most twinsy, they’re somehow different, after all!”

Mother wanted to name us Lillian and Lucian because it sounded twinsy.

A similar trend has been noted for twins being given “twinsy” names.

Two burly men, dressed twinsy-style in identical tight pants and tanktops, swaggered along, linked by their pinkies.

“I didn’t give them twinsy names” is the way the mother of twins used the term in a report on twins on “Good Morning, America” on August 3, 1983.

For both types of twins, lower socioeconomic groups dress their twins more alike and name them with more ‘twinsy’ names, thus emphasizing twinness. […] Moreover, in such cultures as those of the UK and the US the implication of twinship in the broader realities of social structure is clearly indicated by the link between the ‘naming’ process for twins and class differences: higher socio-economic groups tend to choose more separate, less ‘twinsy’ names for their children, emphasizing values of and possibilities for individuation and autonomy, whereas the greater tendency for lower-class groups to actively emphasize and encourage unitary ‘twinness’, whether through naming, dress or referencing (as in the ‘twins’ as a social and linguistic unit) may well reflect values of familial solidarity and fewer opportunities for individual social advancement (Zazzo, 1984).

I’ll admit the twinsy, look-alike makeup is pretty good, but it doesn’t fool me.