Waiting until the baby is born before deciding on the name?

[Clevs]

Just wondering how common this is? I want to choose a name before the baby arrives but husband wants to wait until after the birth to "see what it looks like". I'm struggling to get my head round this as babies don't 'look' like anything do they? Unless you look at the genitals I think it's difficult to even tell if it's a boy or girl a lot of the time.

How many of you waited until after the birth before deciding on a name? And why?

We won't have many names to decide on as we've narrowed it down to about two or three for each gender.

I'm struggling to decide at the moment. I'm thinking I might never decide until I do meet the baby!

We don’t have a name yet. 37 weeks monday and we don’t know the sex.
We have a few names we like for each but nothing is definite.
Other half says he can’t decide till they are here either.
With my dd ( 13 years ago! Big gap! I knew the sex and had her name Picked from early on )

We didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl. We had a couple of boys names picked, and one girls name. We both loved the girls name so that was set, but we weren't sure on the boys name, we really struggled to decide, so we made the final decision after the birth. Once we saw him, one name just seemed to fit better than the other, and it was easy. Four weeks later and his name really suits him :)

Wait. We had a more than a week before deciding. Gives you time to feel what it feels like to say the different names you like in real life. Saying 'could you change Artemis' poo-nappy like right now, please' out loud is different from imagining her as Artemis the young art student sitting whimsically on the steps of St Martins one day.

We waited - we whittled our shortlist down to three names (with an agreed middle name). Couldn't decide once he was here - DP had a strong view but I wasn't sure - so I called him a different name every day for three days and it turned out that his name wasn't the one we were expecting! We used DP's names as middle names but ended up with a name we both liked but neither had loved. Absolutely love it now and it's totally his name.

None of my DDs have had a name until between 2 and 6 hours after birth. 2 out of 3 ended up with names we hadn't even had on the shortlist.

This is what we did with ds. We had 4 or 5 names we liked and just decided when he was born. I wasn't in the best state though and just agreed with dh's choice so fortunately I do like it! Also the midwives kept asking me about his name which stressed me out a bit! This time we've got a shortlist of just 2 names for each but I'm determined not to give into pressure (from dh or midwives!) until I'm sure! It's mainly because we just can't decide yet.

we had a name in mind, but waited until he/she was born to make she he/she suited it.

My own parents named me on the day I was born, the registrar did say - are you sure and they said yes.
3 days later they went and changed it!

My brother couldn't chose a name for his dc2 and 3. No. 3 was named the day before the 6 weeks ran out! (6 weeks to register the birth)

We had a list with both births but i couldn't pick a name until i held them. You are right, they just look like babies but i felt strange choosing the name of a person i never met.

We waited until after ds was born. He was nameless for 3 days infact!

With first we didn't know the sex, but had narrowed boys name to one and girls was between 2. We had decided we would use both girls names but didn't know which was first name and which was middle, we decided when DD was born.

With dc2 we found out it was ds and we picked his name about 2 months before his birth, but told no one. We had picked an unusual name and I knew my dm would pass comment, much harder to do when ds had arrived.

Don't agree personally as I like to give my DC their identity as it where rather than being referred to as it, I hate with a passion "when's it due" you don't have to tell everyone and your not taking any of the anticipation or surprise away, for all those that say it won't suit that's fine a baby grows into their name anyway and the trick is to pick one that you love, if important to you to have nn potential and that you as perents agree on.

I know a few people who have. I think it can be easier to choose once you've seen your baby.
We didn't want to know the sex until the birth. The boys name was decided around 5 months into my pregnancy, but we just couldn't agree on a girls name at all (I liked one particular name but no one else did, not even dh).
We had a boy, as soon as the midwife said "it's a boy", I looked at my husband and said "ds's name". That was it. However if we'd had a girl, we had no clue what she would have been called.

I've never bought into the idea that a chosen name becomes unsuitable after the baby's born because "they just didn't look like a X". Newborns don't look like anything. Neither of my babies looked like their names when they were born, and it usually took a few weeks of calling them a pet name before I felt like they inhabited their actual names.

Plenty of people say they changed their minds at birth because the baby didn't look like the name, but that's just confirmation bias talking. I'm sure the child would have been just fine with their first choice name also

We thought we had a name for dd2 but then once she was here neither of us liked it for her. Not sure why it just didn't seem to fit. It's hard to explain!

I chose a name both times, then changed it when I met them!

Left naming till after the birth for 3 out of 4 of my children. Massive. Mistake.

We would get so caught up in the 'newborn bubble' that we just quite happily referred to the new one as 'baby' or 'the baby' or other silly ( outing )nick names for weeks. We are pretty heathen. By six weeks or near then, a letter would arrive telling us to register the baby.

Then, sleep deprived, brain addled it was just as difficult as before the birth to think of something especially with a cut off looming. Probably harder. And the baby always seemed to 'look' more like whatever silly nickname we'd given them, than this very important name we were trying to adorn it with.

Put my foot down for no 4. Thought of name. Ran it past DH regardless of his reactions. And after the birth when someone medical said to me " what's their name?" I just said it. Job done.

NO baby looks like their name!

I did this all three times. We had various names we liked and decided properly once they arrived. I personally don't like naming a child before they are born.

DC1 was named at 20 week scan. DC2 was named 2 years before he was born

We had a shortlist for DD2 as Just couldn’t decide and then waited until she arrived before seeing which suited her best. The favourite wasn’t chosen as it was not her at all!

We made a list but had no definite decision until we saw her

We decided after both kids were born. It took 4 days to decide for our first. We had though of a few names but the name we eventually chose was none of those! The name we chose just fitted.
2nd was easier. Almost as soon as he was born we had a name that fitted.

We had a shortlist of 3 names and waited til we met our DS until we named him (both times) they do ‘look like’ or in our case ‘didn’t look like’ a name.

Really? What does a baby Stephen or a baby Arthur look like, for example ?