Mothers of fraternal twin children: From left, Blog Author Ann aka Ama (born on Saturday) and “Abena” (born on Tuesday) at Elmina (Ghana) Slave Dungeon
Who knew that giving births to fraternal twins would be a strong linkage to connecting African Diasporan families? Do twins “run in your family?”
In African diasporan genealogy, I’ve found several clues that live within me as a fraternal twin mother, and within so many other African, African American, Brazilian, Caribbean women. In short, twin births are the highest among Black women in these regions of the world. By contrast, fraternal twin births are low in Europe and the lowest in East Asia.
I’ve been curious about the birth of twins since my boy and girl set were born some forty years ago at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia USA. Each time I’ve visited Africa since 2010, I’ve met mothers of twins, family members of twins, and of course, twins. The intersting feature is that often fraternal Black twins — that is, not identical ones — do not necessarily have similar outward features. I have a sense that some combinations of people are twins and that is how I often make such connections on USA, Caribbean and African soils. On an April 2026 visit to Ghana’s Elmina community, I easily located a mother of fraternal twin children (pictured, on right). She, too, had a boy and girl twin who were soon to celebrate a milestone birthday.
Diaspora Connection
The same regions in West Africa known for higher twinning rates are also regions where many our enslaved Africans ancestors were trafficked from. It is interesting that elevated rates of fraternal twins among African-descended populations in the U.S., Caribbean, and Brazil. I met groups of people from northeast Ghana who are connected to Brazil.
This is more than a statistic—it is continuity. Even after the forced enslaved passages across the Atlantic Ocean where we are still piecing together generations of separations, something remained.
Fraternal twinning that is mostly linked to West African ancestry is a huge genealogy search clue. This inherited trait traveled across generations during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and still appears in families today. For genealogists that include me, and for all family researchers, twin births are helping to trace maternal lines.
This means that we can reconnect with our ancestors through another familial linkage and remind us that even when records are long gone, our fraternal twin ancestry leaves a wonderful mark.
Twins as Genealogical Clues
As we comb through government and other historical records, be on the look out for the following clues about your family that will likely help to further identify African geographical and genealogical linkages:
- Two children listed with the same age and date of birth in early Census records;
- Probate, plantation, church and other social documents referring to “twins”;
- Oral family stories about the “two born together”; and
- Repeated twin births on maternal sides of our families.
I’ve located twins on my paternal and maternal family lines based on the connection of birth dates. It is shoring up my family’s linkage to West Africa.
In most of West Africa, the birth of twins is considered a significant sign from the gods. Amongst the Yoruba they are thought to bring good luck — St. Louis Art Museum
More Than a Coincidence
For those who are interested in the science of twinning, fraternal twins happen when a woman releases more than one egg during ovulation. Research shows this occurs more often in some West African populations than anywhere else in the world. That means it may not be random when repeated twin births occur in a family line—especially across generations. Our ancestors and today’s Black families often remark that “twins skip a generation” or something similar when explaining the phenomenon of twin births within families.
For instance, my maternal grandmother gave birth to fraternal twin daughters. Skipping a generation, I birthed fraternal twin children — John and Jocelyn.
Several recent studies track twin births in West Africa. According to a study of data from 135 countries by the University of Oxford’s Christiaan Monden and his colleagues published in 2020, the Ivory Coast had a rate of 24.9 twins for every 1,000 births during 2010 – 2015. The report found that Ghana and South Sudan had the second-highest twinning rate, each with 24.8 twins per 1,000 deliveries, followed by Liechtenstein on 24.7 per 1,000. About 1.6 million twins are now born worldwide each year.
“The twinning rate in Africa is so high because of the high number of dizygotic twins – twins born from two separate eggs – born there.” He continued, “This is most likely to be due to genetic differences between the African population and other populations,” explained researcher Monden.
Next steps
We spend our time in genealogy and ancestry research searching for what was lost. Things and people are not really lost, all are simply unrecognized.
Twin births remind us that our ancestors left patterns, traits, and living evidence of who they were and where they came from. Even in the absence of records, the body remembers.
Our stories are told in pairs.
