To share or not to share?

sanctanomina Naming nitty gritty

I’ve got a few things I want to post about, but a busy day here so I’ll just leave you with this question for now:

Do you share with others the names you’re considering for your baby before the baby’s born, or do you wait until birth? Why or why not?

11 thoughts on “To share or not to share?”

  1. I only have one child, but we didn’t share his name before he was born, and we likely won’t for any other children. Mostly because I fear if I do share the name it will back me into a corner and I won’t be able to change my mind if I have doubts about it. But we do find out and share the gender, so it’s kind of nice to have a little something to surprise our family and friends with after the baby is born. Also, who is going to say anything bad about a name when they have a squishy cutie little baby in their arms?? 🙂

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  2. With out first two babies, we kept their names a surprise (minus a slip up when talking to my mom a couple of weeks before my daughter was born). My other daughter is named after my mom, we kept that a surprise. Since then it’s depended on whether we’ve known our top choice. If we’re set in our choice, we share. If we’re not sure, we don’t discuss the finalist too much. Also as our four sons all have classic New Testament names it doesn’t take a genius to guess our short list.

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  3. I also only have one child, and we didn’t completely decide on her name till after she was born. Her name hadn’t even been on our radar at all until two weeks before she was born, and yet it really feels like her name–she just is a little Martha! So, we definitely fall into the wait till you see them/till God leads you to the right name camp, and I wouldn’t want to feel boxed into a corner with an early announcement either.
    Having said that, we did discuss our name ideas with friends and family during pregnancy, and I think we’ll avoid doing that for future children. Partly because our taste is a little different than that of many family members, and it’s an unnecessary emotional drain when they aren’t enthused about your choices. 😉 but also because the final naming decision ended up being such an intimate emotional process–my husband and I and the Holy Spirit nudging us towards the right name. I want to savor that intimacy for longer next time. It’s a really meaningful thing to give a new soul a name, and sharing the process with too many people, in retrospect, was a little invasive. However, I will totally need to hash out naming thoughts and ideas ad nauseum when I’m pregnant next, so I’m counting on Sancta Nomina to fill the gap! 😉

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  4. With my first, we shared our top choices and found that we got a bit burned by it. A lot of family members decided to pick “sides” and mention how much they disliked the other choices. But, we ended up going with an entirely different name from left field. Everyone was surprised, but they couldn’t really complain once it was a cute little guy named Finnian.
    With our second, we sort of just tossed around ideas, without ever really deciding until she was born and she just looked like a Genevieve. We also kept her middle name, after my sister, a secret and I think it was such a nice surprise.
    This time around, I think everyone knows we like “unusual” names and that we don’t exactly announce the name beforehand, so we are a little more free to throw around choices for reactions. (My husband is terrible at keeping secrets anyway, so it’s better he asks everyone about all the possible choices, so they don’t really know which one it is.) The only difference is that we are pretty set on the boy name, and we have “warned” people that may not prefer that style. But you never know til that baby comes out what we will name it!

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  5. We have names picked out for our next twelve kids 😉 lol

    We never find out what we’re having. And, we almost never share our names. I do share my opinion when speaking with others about names they like, if they ask me for an opinion. And, I share some names that my husband likes but I would never use. (Like Jesse for a boy. I am sorry for the wonderful Jesse of the Old Testament, but Jessica nn Jessie has pretty ruined every chance of my ever using it for one of my own children. Masculine or feminine.) **I should mention my husband’s grandma has nearly 80 grandchildren, and about 38 great grandchildren now. There is only ONE repeat name. One granddaughter is Hailey, and last year a great granddaughter was named Haylee.**

    Hubby’s grandma having no doubles has been a strong reason to not share because we love our chosen names and really don’t want someone to be enlightened to a particular name because we talked about it but had the opposite sex at birth. Silly, I know. And, I absolutely cannot stand others opinions about names especially when they aren’t asked. What if I really liked a name but everyone made a fuss about it? I know some folks will still turn their noses up, even when they’ve seen the face that goes with the name, but it isn’t nearly as often as with the pre-birth conversation about it.

    For us, when birth-day comes, we walk in with our boy name and our girl name and whomever is born is named immediately. We talk about names a-l-l the time! We have so many we both love. My husband especially feels that you have 9 months to come up with a name for this new life and that it is our moral duty to have a name for a child, especially for those who find out the sex, picked and ready at birth. It makes him crazy that people can’t decide, or there isn’t even a possible ball park on a name. hahahaha! 🙂 I have to remind him not every couple has the same taste in names like we do.

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  6. We tend not to discuss names seriously until the 20-week ultrasound. Dh and I just really struggle to commit to names without knowing the sex. It takes a lot of energy to meld our tastes and then it saddens me to think that one name won’t be used!

    Once we find out the sex (which we do share), we tell loved ones and friends, “Feel free to suggest any names you like. We will consider all suggestions but make no promises that we’ll use any of them.” (This is because family loves to pitch ideas our way, haha). I personally love hearing people’s ideas, and with our first, it helped me gauge the different name tastes of the family our baby would be entering into (and how accepted his name may or may not be, hehe). To answer your original question, though, no we don’t share *our* list. And we don’t decide on the final name anyway until the baby is born.

    The exception being my sisters. I am very close with my two sisters who have named 8 children between the two of them so far and who are also name nerds. It is beyond delightful to hash out name ideas with them. They help me narrow down the names I want to pitch to Dh as well as just indulge my love of names in a way that Dh doesn’t feel up to often, haha. And if they don’t love a name we love as a couple? Meh, doesn’t bother me. Our relationship can handle it. I also did share our final two options for both kiddos with my mom because I also love to discuss names with her, and she is wonderful at being impartial and excited for either option. (That ended up being a bit of a joke anyway with our daughter, because when she was born, it became evident that my Dh actually didn’t want either of our finalist names, and we were back to the drawing board for 3 long days after her birth. At that point, we were SO desperate, we started polling everyone, even the nurses, between our 3 final names, haha. This will NOT ever happen again, because it was truly awful).

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  7. We’ve never found out beforehand if we’re having a boy or a girl (four girls and one boy thus far and one named girl loss baby…. no idea yet for baby #6 though due in 6.5 weeks). This makes it easy not to settle on a name officially. I love discussing names and sharing our thoughts as we go through the process. Initially I was wary of sharing because of some of the feedback we got, but now it doesn’t bother me in the least. I feel much more confident in our naming style and abilities and I know our babies will be loved whether their names are ones people care for or not!

    I’d be quite interested in some naming discussion/consult for this baby #6 as well… mostly stuck on a suitable girl name if this baby is a girl!

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  9. We have six and we’ve always found out what we were having when pregnant. And we always tell people what we are having. But we do keep the names secret because we figure people need some surprise!

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  10. I usually only share our names with close friends, but rarely family. I shared two names (for a girl) with two close family members and they expressed their outright disgust with them. Needless to say, than the names (which I still like) were kind of ruined for me. So we never give a definite name but always have two or three we like or prefer, and actually, with all three babies, ultimately decided the final name during the drive to the hospital to have the baby. I don’t mind sharing with close friends because I feel like we have similar naming styles or at least are more respectful than the older generations who will say their outright dislike of certain names.

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