20 Strange Things People Once Believed About Twins

One medieval legend claimed that a Dutch countess gave birth to 365 children in a single day. The story allegedly took place in 1276, when Countess Margaret of Henneberg mocked a beggar woman who had given birth to twins, and the beggar cursed her to give birth to as many babies as there are days in a year. The story was popular in the 16th and 17th centuries and became linked to a local church in Loosduinen. Behind this legend is a false historical belief: that twins could only be the product of two different fathers, which meant their mothers could be branded as adulterers. As if giving birth to two babies at once wasn’t enough to deal with!

For some pre-colonial Igbo communities in what is now southeastern Nigeria, the birth of twins could be feared rather than celebrated. Twins were considered aru, or an unnatural violation of order. When babies were born as twins, they were placed in earthenware pots and left in the Evil Forest (Ojo Ogwu). The practice ended gradually between 1880 and 1920. It wasn’t the work of one heroic woman, Scottish missionary Mary Slessor, but of decades of pressure from Slessor, indigenous converts, and colonial enforcement.

When British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard conducted fieldwork among the Nuer of South Sudan in the 1930s, he recorded a very different understanding of twins. The Nuer considered twins to be “spirits of the above,” or kuth nhial, sent from the Spirit. Twins were associated with birds, given bird names, called dit, and thought of as belonging to the sky, not only to their human family. They even received unique mortuary rites after death.

In imperial China, having several babies at once could earn a family an official government reward, but there was a catch. Qing Dynasty law spelled out precisely what constituted a birth special enough to qualify. An edict first issued in 1663 and revised in 1674 stipulated a reward of five piculs of rice (an old unit of weight) and 10 pieces of cloth, but only for the birth of three or more sons. Twins, or even all-female triplets, didn’t qualify. Talk about having very specific requirements!

Among the Yoruba of West Africa, twins held such spiritual importance that the death of one didn’t simply end their place within the family. Yoruba twins (Ibeji) were believed to share a single, indestructible soul. If one died, the family would commission a carved figure representing the lost twin (Ere Ibeji) and care for it by washing it, anointing it with palm oil and camwood powder, and feeding it. Yoruba communities had extraordinarily high rates of twinning, with figures from the 18th to 20th centuries recording 45-50 sets of twins per 1,000 births, among the highest rates ever recorded.

Among the Kwakwaka’wakw people of the Pacific Northwest Coast, twins were believed to represent the Salmon People in human form and have power over salmon and the weather. During First Salmon ceremonies, twins would carry the first of the season’s catch onto the beach, while their parents could neither touch fishing gear nor eat fresh salmon. Anthropologist Franz Boas recorded these beliefs between 1902 and 1905. Having twins came with some very specific fishing rules!

Scottish Highland folklore didn’t just treat twins as unusual; some traditions gave them supernatural abilities. Twins were believed to have Dà-shealladh, or Second Sight. But it was also a dangerous gift. To avoid a twin being taken by the Sìdhe, or fairies, and replaced with a changeling, families might leave an iron nail by the infant’s cradle or sprinkle rowan water — both considered protection against fairies — and make sure both babies were baptized at the same time.

One of the great stories of Maya mythology centers on a pair of twins named Hunahpu and Xbalanque. The hero twins defeated the lords of the underworld in a ballgame, and their story survives in the K’iche’ Maya text Popol Vuh, which was written down around 1550 CE, although the tradition was much older. Classic Maya rulers, between 250 and 900 CE, built stone ballcourts and linked themselves to the hero twins. Rulers reenacted the ballgame during accession rituals, when a new ruler took power, and at harvest ceremonies, while art referencing the ballgame and its mythic origins appeared centuries before the story was written down.

Among the Antambahoaka people of Madagascar’s Mananjary region, an ancestral taboo called fady kambana surrounded the birth of twins. Twin births were considered a violation of ancestral harmony. Abandoning them was regarded as a duty within the tradition, and twins were left in the forest. By the beginning of the 20th century, however, French colonial law had reshaped the custom, and families increasingly had to turn to orphanages or leave the region instead.

Ancient Sparta famously had two kings at the same time, and legend traced the unusual arrangement back to twins. According to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, the dual monarchy began with the twin brothers Eurysthenes and Procles of the Heracleid line, who were supposedly required by the Oracle of Delphi to rule jointly. While we don’t know whether the brothers actually existed, the system they supposedly inaugurated lasted long after their time, and the two dynasties they founded, the Agiad and Eurypontid lines, ruled the city side-by-side for about five centuries. Sharing a kingdom with your sibling certainly takes sibling rivalry to another level.

Two twin priestesses in ancient Egypt once had to fight a problem that still sounds remarkably familiar: they weren’t getting paid. In 162 BCE, temple officials at the Serapeum of Memphis withheld the grain and oil allowances owed to Taues and Taous. The sisters performed lamentations in the roles of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys. A man named Ptolemaios represented them and petitioned King Ptolemy VI Philometor on their behalf. The petition was successful, and the twins’ pay was reinstated. Some workplace problems really are timeless.

In some ancient Indian religious texts, the unexpected arrival of twins could be treated as a disturbance in the proper order of the universe. The Grihya Sutras, compiled roughly between 800 and 300 BCE, considered the birth of twins to be an aberration of Rta, or cosmic order. Brahmin priests therefore performed appeasement rituals called Shanti, using mantras and offerings made into a sacred fire to restore harmony in the household. That’s quite a lot of cosmic responsibility to place on two newborns.

What would happen if a French queen gave birth to twin boys and both had a claim to the throne? Medieval and early modern jurists actually thought about it. They agreed the firstborn would retain the right to inherit the throne under Salic Law. But that scenario remained theoretical, since no queen of France ever bore twin boys. High officials were assigned to witness royal births to prevent any suspicion that babies had been switched, although that precaution wasn’t limited to twins. In 1727, Louis XV’s wife did give birth to twins, but they were girls, Louise Élisabeth and Henriette. So France prepared for the royal twin problem without ever actually having one.

In Edo-period Japan, from 1603 to 1867, some families responded to the birth of twins by quietly separating them. One twin was sometimes secretly given away soon after birth. Twin births (futago) could carry superstition and stigma because they were associated with animal litters, while families could also fear that the babies would die young.

In traditional Bali, the meaning of a twin birth could depend heavily on the family the babies were born into. The birth of boy-girl twins to commoners, known as manak buncing, was considered polluting, as the children were thought to have been married in a previous life. Consequently, parents were required to undergo a period of seclusion outside their home villages for 42 days (a cycle) or 35 days (a selapan), followed by purification rituals. Royal families, however, played by very different rules: royal twins were not subject to these same taboos and purification rituals. Their birth was cause for celebration.

For the Fon people of the historic Kingdom of Dahomey, in what is now Benin, having twins could actually change a mother’s status. Twins were called hovi and associated with a Vodun deity called Hoho. Families kept shrines to the spirit of twins in their homes, with two clay pots and two small iron rattles (gan). Mothers of twins were even given the special title Honnongan.

In the Buganda Kingdom of present-day Uganda, twins didn’t arrive alone; they brought new titles for their parents with them. The birth of twins was treated as a supernatural event. Anthropologist John Roscoe recorded the multi-day kwalula ceremony, which involved fertility dances and crowns made from barkcloth and cowrie shells to appease the spirits of the twins. The father automatically became Ssalongo, while the mother became Nnalongo. Most new parents leave childbirth with a baby. These parents left with new names, too.

For the Inca, the birth of twins could be connected to one of the most powerful forces in the sky: thunder. Twin births were known as chuchu, and Incan priests interpreted the event as a manifestation of Illapa, the god of thunder. They made offerings of shell meal and corn beer at shrines. High-Andes mountain pastoralists also made stone carvings of twin llamas called illas. These were rubbed with corn beer and fat at the winter solstice and buried in corrals to encourage animal fertility.

Human babies weren’t the only twins that could carry special meaning. Among the Ainu of Hokkaido, twin brown bear cubs were considered an exceptional gift from the gods. They were raised with reverence, and eventually the bear’s spirit was sent back to the gods through a ritual called Iomante. Human twins also received special recognition, with village elders offering prayers specifically for them. Twins, it seems, were remarkable whether they arrived in a cradle or on four paws.

Nearly 4,000 years ago, Babylonian and Assyrian scribes were already writing down what unusual births might mean for the future. Between about 1900 BCE and the 7th century BCE, they collected such reports into a 24-tablet series called Šumma Izbu, copies of which were later preserved in the Library of Ashurbanipal. Rather than treating these unusual births as judgments on the babies themselves, the scribes read them as warnings about what might happen to the wider kingdom, from palace coups to harvests and military campaigns.

This content was created with the help of AI.