Tuesday, February 28, 2012

365 Days of Twinipedia - Day 72






Day Seventy-two of Twinipedia:





Fact #72
Now we had always known that we were Fraternal twins.  And we also have spent our lives being questioned about it since we look so much a like and so many people can't believe that we are not identical but we are pretty sure we are fraternal.
Something we learned today from Wikipedia that we had never known before and reminded us again how much we love doing Twinipedia each day was that there is more than one term for the kinds of twins we are.  In fact there are several.
"Fraternal twins can also be referred to as dizygotic (DZ), or 'non-identical twins', or 'dissimilar twins'.  Fraternal twins like us can also be called 'biovular' twins which in non-science terms means 'two egg twins."
Now this next term though was the one that was really interesting to us since it defined our twin-ness with even more detail.  We are female-female fraternal twins which is less common than male-female fraternal twins.  The latter makes up about 50% of fraternal twins while the rest is female-female or male-male with the female-female twinning estimated at about 20% of the other 50%.
So scientists came up with a even more defining name for us.  We are female, Sororal twins)
This word reminded us of Sorority which is an all female organization.  Seems appropriate.  Which led us to want to look up the words origin and definition to understand it more.


The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines Sororal as...
SORORAL: of, relating to, or characteristic of a sister : sisterly
And states it's origin as...
SORORAL - Origin: Latin soror sister — more at sister
First Known Use: 1858

This stuff just fascinates us.  Who knew that we had our own Twin Term referring to our specific type of twin relationship.  Very cool!  

Another set of Sororal twins are Jenna and Barbara Bush, the daughters of former President George W. Bush.


Sleeping 8 month old Sororal twin sisters.  You can feel their bond through this beautiful photo! 
                        Me and Rebecca in Germany 2011

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