A couple in Belgium has gone viral when giving their 11 children first names based on different variations of just four letters (A, E, L, and X) from the alphabet.
Gwenny Blanckaert and Marino Vaneeno are the proud parents of eleven children including seven girls and four boys. All of their children have four-letter names, the same four letters, in fact. Although there are 26 letters in the alphabet to work with, after making their first to children Alex and Axel, the couple revealed they decided to use just the letters A, E, L, and X to name their other kids. And the two parents both wanted a big family, so they ended up having to use variations of those four letters to name their next nine children as well. They also plan to do the same when their twelfth child is born next year.
Gwenny said, “We thought Alex was a great first name and then we called our second child Axel
“We realized that they were the same letters, so we decided to continue like this.”
Accordingly, the children of the Belgian couple are named Alex, Axel, Xela, Lexa, Xael, Xeal, Exla, Leax, Xale, Elax and Alxe. The parents of 11 claim that getting their names right is not that hard. However, it’s a different story for the teachers, especially with five of their children studying at the same school.
In April next year, Gwenny and Marino will be welcoming their 12th baby into the world, and the two plan to uphold the same naming tradition as before. The four letters allow for 24 different first names, so they have 13 variations to choose from.
Bizarre baby naming tradition of Gwenny and Marino first made news headlines a couple of years ago, when they had nine kids. Since then, they’ve been keeping busy and now their family is in the news again.