Your child’s name, of course, is very important and I’d suggest that Zeus or Apollo are fine choices for any boy, and Jezebel is not a bad option for the girls.
If you have twins, you should also consider names that are complementary. Something like Ping and Pong, for example, could work quite well and give each child a sense of individuality especially for those days when they’re both wearing the same striped Waldo shirts.
I would, however, advise against going the cross-gender route. For example, never name your girl Zeus or your boy Jezebel. This can cause issues.
This, I’m afraid, will be discovered by the son of Peaches Geldof, a boy who — I suppose it’s old news now — has been named Phaedra.
Phaedra, for those not up on their Greek mythology, was a goddess of sorts who fell in love with her stepson. After he spurned her advances, Phaedra accused him of raping her. For this, the young man’s father killed him. Then, out of guilt, Phaedra killed herself.
So Phaedra was a rather nasty girl and, even with a questionable name like Peaches, Ms Geldof should have known better than to saddle her son with this sort of linkage.
Even if the kids in the school playground don’t know a single Greek myth, they will still laugh at little Phaedra because, well, it’s just a very laughable name.
It’s far better to go with a boring biblical name. This is the exact case with our three kids. This includes the adopted Ugandan girl who was given her wonderful Old Testament name long before we knew she’d ever grace our dinner table.
Even my own name comes from the Good Book, a name that honours a man of great doubt, the sort of fellow who needed some proof – needed to put his fingers in the nail holes, needed to put his hand into the side that was split open – before he could really move on with his life.
Yes, I am named after history’s greatest skeptic. And I am totally fine with it. There are worse things in the world, after all.
One is carrying a name that doesn’t give you the foggiest notion of who you really are.