Did you..

[Heh1991]

Keep your baby name a secret pre-birth or test it out on friends and family before choosing?

We told family and regret it. She's not even here yet and some are kicking up a fuss on her very traditional name as it's "too old"

We've only told a couple of people that we knew would be supportive.

Told family. I don’t care if they don’t like the names, they’re nice people and won’t be deliberately hurtful I’m just interested in their honest opinions on names and I wouldn’t get that after birth.

We learnt the hard way to keep it to ourselves.

Complete secret. Wouldn't dream of telling people because you can always tell by someone's face regardless of what they say, If they dislike it. And who cares!

Told family that we were considering a particular name. In our case they loved it- it turned out it was the name of 2 beloved deceased relatives on DH’s side that had never been mentioned to him before, including one who was semi famous for being the first woman to do something impressive. So then we felt like we HAD to use it and couldn’t change our minds. And ultimately it was the right name for DD but I wish we could have been the ones to fully decide on it.
Next baby we won’t be telling anyone!

Never told a soul.

I didn't tell anyone. Constantly had family badgering me for it.

SIL said she liked "tree" "fox" "bridge"... Gave the family something to chew over behind her back. And then when the baby was born she gave him a traditional name.

I highly recommend the approach of SIL and I shall use this should I ever be pregnant again

Nope didn’t tell anyone

We didn't tell anyone before the birth.

We told everyone and we didn't ask for opinions, we're both extremely stubborn though so I doubt anyone would have voiced an objection even if they had one.

Dh and I picked a boy and girl name each before our 20 week scan, whichever of us hadn't chosen the first name got to choose the middle name so we may not have ended up liking our dc's whole name anyway.

We had a couple of names for each gender and told them to a few family members, but once we had decided on one of each we kept it to ourselves

Didn't tell anyone!

Complete secret from everyone. My parents nagged, my step dad wanted to know so he could vet it. I told everyone it was not their decision and we announced names when babies were born.

We had it as a secret. Kind of takes away the magic finding out the sex and telling people the name. Isn’t that part of the fun of it, guessing these things?!

I think it's a good idea, in case somebody points out a potential problem with the name which just did not occur to you. We were all set on one name until two people pointed out that it is a popular brand of ladies' wig in the country where we are living....back to the drawing board!

There is usually a "baby name regret" post or two on these boards, and I suspect that in most cases, the OP did not run the name past anyone before choosing it, and only found out later that there might be reasons why the name was not so great. It's just taking a bit of a risk.

Do NOT test it out. When you announce it, you announce it. You can do that before the birth if you prefer, but you need to do it in a way that makes it clear it's not up for discussion and won't be changed.

Told people and almost instantly regretted it. In-laws especially have been quite rude and now constantly suggest other names
The name we have chosen is traditional, non-offensive and (IMO obviously) lovely, yet they still constantly suggest alternatives. Next time will 100% be keeping to ourselves

A secret from everyone. Then everyone said how unusual except one person 70 plus who had the same name who said it was awful.

It was an unheard of name for anyone to have who was under 70 then.

Now it's really popular.

Florence. She's 23.

Yes. Nobody objected.