Do you choose a name before or after you meet your baby?

[edendvatri]

Just curious to see how people most often choose names - do you think of names while you're pregnant or do you wait until you meet your baby to see what character it has and choose a name to suit its temperament?

Do you choose a name at the spot in the hospital or do you give yourself time to decide?

I think it varies. We have a shortlist to 'try on' for the new arrival, but open to other ideas that suit post birth.

Will take our time to decide though - think you have 6 weeks to register the birth?

My PFB is 8 weeks old and we had a shortlist of names that gradually got longer and shorter during the pregnancy. We assumed that when the kid arrived, we'd know which one suited him.
Then he turned up, all beautiful and perfect, and he didn't look like any of the names - he just looked like a baby. So we found ourselves trying out our final shortlist of 3 until the end of Day 2, at which point DP gave me a deadline of 15 minutes before he was going to phone his parents and announce a name (I am dreadful at decisions, this was necessary not mean). So we picked one. Still getting used to it now and more often we call him by a non-name-related nickname, or just refer to 'Him'.

DD1 15 years before she was conceived.
DD2 a week or two before she was born and finalised when DD1 happily called her it when she was a few minutes old. (Home birth.)

I had DD's name in my head from the first moment I knew I was pregnant, and we privately referred to her as that right through even though we had not found out the sex (I was always convinced she would be a girl tho). When she was born we waited a few days to decide as it is a fairly grown-up name and we didn't want to stick with it out of habit IYSWIM. At that point thee was another name that we thought would really suit her too.

I think it was about day 4 or 5 when we were totally sure, and seeing loads of threads on here about people wanting to change their baby's name makes me think we did the right thing to wait. Our families had plenty to say about it tho!

Always decided (roughly) before the baby arrived, I get hung up on naming, it's got to be right.

I did make some slight alterations and the final decision after seeing them though.

For DD we had a girls name and a boys name all picked out ages before she arrived so when she was born we couldn't imagine calling her anything else.
For our three boys we had a lists of boy and girl names we both loved but could never agree on 'the one'. So when they were born we picked one from the list. Doing it this way has meant DH has had his choices though as each time I have been too knackered and in love with my newborns to think straight. I picked the middle names when they were a couple of days old!

Picked both our babies' names before the birth. People say 'ooh when he was born he didn't look like a Jack, he looked like a Charlie' but when my babies were born they didn't look like anything other than babies, and the names we had thought of were just fine.

We've sort of known what we did and didn't like before the birth but we've not decided until afterwards. I like to meet them first before I give them a name for life :) My boys I've found easier than my girl though. She was nameless for quite a while but the boys were named pretty much right away.

We get a list of a few Nd decide afterwards. I agree though they don't look like a name just a squishy pure bundle that doesn't seem to 'need' a name!

DD1 + 2 - first name chosen before, shortlist of middle names DS we had a shortlist for first name but had chosen the middle name.

Either way works fine.

We have chosen before birth both times,and probably will again.
I wouldn't tell anyone else until the baby was born though,just incase.

We had a shortlist for both genders (didn't know what we were having). When she was born, we took 12 hours to decide. I don't get the whole choosing a definite name at 20 weeks pregnant thing.