Un-named babies

[dexifehatz]

I had all my kids names sorted by the time they were born and I'm genuinely interested to know how common it is to have not decided a name by the time your baby's born?

i kind of thought it was tempting fate somehow to have decided on the name beforehand. i don't know why really. also would feel under pressure to give name away beforehand, which many on mn have found often doesn't go too well

but then given the trauma i had naming DD perhaps deciding beforehand is the more sensible approach!

We had a girl's name sorted, and a short list of three potential boys names.

It took us a few days to make our minds up once DS was born.

We had a shortlist. But had to wait until we saw DD to know which one suited her.

With all 4 we waited until they were born and could see what they looked like. Personally, it would have felt very odd to name a baby that I'd never seen.

My Dh said that his sister's rule was you had to have the name sorted by the time you rang people to inform them of the birth. For some reason he and I believed this was an actual rule so that is what we did.

i can see the point from both sides.
on one side, it might be easier whilst pregnant to sit down and decide with oh what to name baby, but its hard without seeng said baby
the other side, its sometimes easier to see baby and think o god he really doesnt look like a freddie or omg lets go with emma shel really suit that, but then you are really tired and hormonal and not as relaxed and under pressure to name the baby something so u may not end up with fave name.

with the people who dont name their baby for a few weeks, how do you u refer to them? do u say the baby or my daughter/son etc, or do u have nicknames like princess, beanie, sprogster etc

We had a shortlist, and ds seemed like one in particular as soon as he was born.

Despite that we called him "The Baby" for about the first 3 months

we hadn't decided names for any of ours before they were born.

we were fairly certain on ds1, but there was another name we liked too, but we decided which to use whilst still in delivery room

ds2 we just couldn't decide on a name and so he was named when he was a few days old and we'd stopped arguing about it

ds3... ditto! dp didn't like any of my suggestions and couldn't come up with anything else. we ended up with a shortlist but couldn't decide for definite on which one we liked best so he was not named until he was a few weeks old

We didn't, but DD was born at 27 weeks so we weren't really ready!

Oooh...our DD BOTH had no name for weeks! Well about three. We couldn't decide a name before we'd even seen them!

DS1 - we had a couple of girl's names, nothing for a boy. It took us a few days after he was born to come up with anything, during that time we called him Baby or Little Man.

DS2 - neither of the potential girl's names worked with DS1's name so we had no girl's name as well as struggling to think of any more boy's names, he was several days old before he was named, we called him Baby or Little Brother.

I think DP and I both struggled to take the naming thing seriously until we had a deadline to work with and I enjoyed being able to look at the baby and address him by the potential names to see if they worked. I have also been guilty of being a bit at some names I've been told about before a baby's arrival, once the baby arrives it all makes more sense.

We had a boy's name pretty much sorted and a long shortlist of girls' names - just because we find it really hard to agree on boys' names so went with the only two that we both liked!

All fell apart when she turned out to be a she

This time we're not even making a shortlist as such. We're narrowing it down to which names we like for each (ie, the ones that are actually names...), then not pruning it AT ALL. We'll see what happens when DC2 arrives!

one named before arrival
two named at 4 weeks old

DD named at 3 weeks. Known as 'the baby' or 'tinkerbell' until then (and for a little while afterwards too)

I haven't got any children yet, but I have my favourite names that I would actually use sorted out.
I can easily imagine that he/she will come out and not suit any of our choices though, and in that case, he/she would probably remain nameless for quite a while.

Both of my DDs were named before they arrived, this one will be the same. It just worked for us, it felt good to talk about them by name and I don't think newborns particularly suit/don't suit names anyway.