Separated Twins: More Common than Generally Believed

The recent reunification story of two girls adopted by different families points out a problem that we have noticed for many years.  After one of the families contacted us for her daughter's finding ad, we notified them that we also had information that indicated their daughter was a twin. Foster family records, which we obtained on a research project to that area, indicated that although the orphanage had known they were twins, they had separated the girls in the belief that it would be easier to adopt the two girls separately.

This story has created a lot of interest in the adoption community, and efforts are now underway to identify other such "separated twins." In the case of the two children in the story above, even though the orphanage had changed the finding date of one of the two girls, their names strongly implied that they were related. Taken individually, neither name stood out as anything but a traditional orphanage name, but when the last characters of the two girls' names were combined, the word for "Rose" was formed. When the names of two children form such a combination, it is significant evidence, when combined with similar finding data, that the two children are related.

We have created a listing of similar "separated twins," based on similar names, finding data, and other criteria. If your child is on this list, it is very likely that a sibling was adopted by another family (all of these children were internationally adopted).

The following list is a work-in-progress, and will be updated as new potential twins are identified. You can assist in this work if you have purchased your child's orphanage data book and notice unusual pairings.  Please let us know and we can research them further.

Potential Twins