Prime Twins

When my wife gave birth to our sons, Alex and Eli, I was so excited that I called the minister immediately. “Reverend,” I said, “Nadine just gave birth to twin boys!”

“That’s fantastic!” he replied. “Why don’t you bring ’em down to the church on Sunday, and we’ll baptize ’em.”

“How ’bout we just baptize one,” I said. “Let’s keep the other as a control.”

It can be difficult to tell that my sons are identical twins. The picture below, for instance, is a red herring — though they’re identical, Alex is using a TI Math Explorer purely for computation, while Eli clearly prefers the graphing capabilities of a TI‑73.

Prior to their birth, I tried to imagine mathematical names. There are, of course, many pedantic possibilities…

• Area and Perimeter (Ari and Peri, for short)
• Max and Min
• Vector and Scalar
• Radius and Diameter
• Abscissa and Ordinate
• Sine and Cosine

But I’m not one to settle for low-hanging fruit. I pushed myself to find better options.

• If and Only If
• Radius and Apothem
• Vector and Sector
• Perp and Dicular
• Johann and Jakob
• Catenary and Parabola (Cat and Perry, for short)
• Lucas Cameron Maximilian and Gregory Caliban Farquhar (aka, LCM and GCF)

Today, my perfect sons turn the perfect age — six! And though I wasn’t able to convince my wife that Epsilon and Delta would have been perfect names, I have to admit that Alex and Eli suit them just fine.

What are your suggestions for mathy twin names?