First, a little background. Throughout this pregnancy, we've both agreed that we want to be surprised by the babies sex(es) at delivery. And despite some close calls in ultrasound viewings, we're still unsure about whether we'll have two boys, two girls or one of each. Since we don't know, we have different names picked out for each scenario.

We both agreed early on that we didn't want to give our twins rhyming names or other sound-alike names, but did want names that go well together. Diane feels it's proper for twins to share the same first initial--that's how she and her twin sister, Darlene, have gone through life, and it's worked out great for them!

But Craig was adamant that male twins don't need to have the same first initial, so the names we ultimately decided on use the "same first initial theory" for two

Two Boys--Colby David and Brady Lee
We like how the names go with each other; both have strong sounds to them (Colby David Sanders and Brady Lee Sanders) and CB just happen to be Craig's first and middle initials. Lee is Uncle Mark's middle name too (although his is spelled Leigh) and David is the name of Diane's father.

No, we didn't name our twins after Colby from Survivor and baseball player Brady Anderson. Our twins look nothing like those guys!

Two Girls--Morgan Virginia and Maiya Darlene
Names for girl twins were the toughest for us to pick. We've liked Morgan from the start but settled on Maiya (pronounced like the South American civilization--My-ya) after seeing it in some books. Maiya means "Rice Valley" in Japanese, which should make some of the twins' papa's company's clients happy (Craig works for a web design company which has several rice clients, including the Ricecafe.Com). Virginia was picked as one middle name because it was also Diane's maternal grandmother's middle name, and Darlene is named after the twins' aunt.

We know everyone is going to think Morgan is named after either Morgan Fairchild or Morgan Brittany Our Morgan is much prettier than those two actresses!

Boy/Girl--Holden Robert and Halle Marie
We selected two unique names that begin with the letter 'H' for a fraternal boy/girl set of twins. Again, we just like how these sound together. Craig gets to take credit for 'Holden', and he was aware that some people might think it was because of Holden Caufield in 'The Catcher in the Rye', but claims it's unrelated. Robert is named after Diane's maternal grandfather, who passed away shortly before Diane became pregnant. Craig's grandmother was named Mollie so the 'M' in Marie would also be in tribute to her.

Here are some other famous Holden's and Halle's...

So those are the names we've picked out. When they are born, we'll see which set gets to be used. At that point, our biggest challenge will be determining how we use the names when introducing them to friends and family.