Respondents: 51 (This poll is closed)
I told my best friend, mostly because my daughter’s name is a variation of her middle, and my sister was largely involved in the naming process. My mom wasn’t told until we were dead set on the name and she wasn’t allowed to comment, lol.
With my son, my first, my mom was largely involved and we did tell people, because my ex’s family was trying to push names on me and I told them this is his name and that’s final.
I don’t have kids yet, but I ideally would only tell a few select people. I can imagine I would spill the beans from excitement though, haha.
We shared our top names, but we didn’t name my son until after he was born. Luckily we didn’t run into much resistance with our names then. I know there will be more problems with some of our names for baby #2, but I’m pretty good at ignoring them 
I told my best friends, [name]Aubrey[/name] & [name]Marilyn[/name]. That’s it. [name]Aubrey[/name] & [name]Marilyn[/name] are my husband’s sisters, who are just like birth sisters to me. My parents & his parents were told our top suggestions.
Thanks for all the comments.
I’ve held out so far… but will definitely be tough when I travel home next month to see my family!
I’m not comfortable sharing before the baby is born anymore. It seems like if you announce your intended name it becomes everyone’s chance to talk you out of it. That’s why I adore online forums so much! 
We shared but with the second it took us almost to the end of the pregnancy and we had said we weren’t sure what the name was going to be so many times that people didn’t necessarily believe us until she was born and legally named with the name.
I think it depends on how long you have.
I had a name set for [name]Brooke[/name]- for a majority of the pregnancy she was going to be [name]Brianna[/name]. Then AFTER she was born we switched to [name]Brooke[/name]. So things may yet change.
If you tell people before it may seem that you are asking for their opinion- and people are usually ready to give their opinions.
What if their opinions were negative? would you care?
Food for thought.
emiliaj
I told everyone the initials, and let them guess at what they stood for until the babies arrived. If you make a game out of it, it’s a fun way to avoid actually telling anyone.
I don’t have kids yet, but when I do, I’ll probably only share the potential names with my online friends and maybe a couple of people who I feel can keep a secret. The last thing I would need is my so-called friends and family tearing apart my name choices and making me second-guess everything.
Personally I didn’t care whether people liked the names on our list or not so I was initially happy to share them however when my husband told people and they reacted negatively he would scrub the name from our list. Our list was starting to get really short due to this, so I put a lid on the whole thing and stopped both him and I from discussing it with anyone other than just us. If he hadn’t been so influenced then it wouldn’t have been a problem. It was nice, though, that when [name]Spencer[/name] was born we could surprise people with the name as we’d told everyone the sex.
I told my close friends and family. My ex husbands family tried to talk us out of the names, but that’s just because they’re just like that.
No way. I don’t know why anyone would tell beforehand. Someone could use the name before you do and you then you have to listen to everyone elses opinions on the names. Once the baby is born and named, most people have the courtesy of keeping their opinions to themselves. While your pregnant, everyone likes to put in their two cents.
Yes, and I’ll never make that mistake again because I got my girl name stolen. I am very careful about who I say anything to now.
I told everyone who asked we had picked [name]Nina[/name] [name]Beatrice[/name]…including my pregnant [name]SIL[/name] & [name]BIL[/name]…and guess who had their babies before I had mine and named one [name]NINA[/name]???
So we picked another name and I only told my best friends (none of them were pregnant btw!) and my sister…and I found nameberry!
The good thing is that I told EVERYONE my name choice so when the [name]SIL[/name] & [name]BIL[/name] used the name everyone was shocked and appalled. I would’ve been more miserable if they did that and no one even knew they were name thieves.
No children yet, and wont have any for a while, but the Husband and I have thrown around a few names here and there. We plan on keeping the names a secret because the names we like are kinda out there and i dont want people criticizing the names we choose, or trying to talk us out of them. I’ll probably share the Initals though. (I’m not so worried about name thieves because just about everyone we know already have kids.)
I haven’t got a little one as yet, but, I am pretty darn sure that even if I tried, there is now way that I could keep my chosen name to myself; no chance.
We told our best friends but kept it from family. [name]Both[/name] of our families didn’t like the name we picked out ([name]Arabella[/name] [name]Jean[/name]) and we knew that was going to happen. We didn’t want family to think that they had a say in the names that we picked and we also knew that our friends already knew that they weren’t going to change our mind.
Our families have decided that they like the “unique name” although it took a while. All the grandparents butcher her name, apologize, and then say, “Well, if you had named her something normal…” I’d say share it with people if you are OK with people giving you their unsolicited opinions and advice.
My husband was 100% set on DS’ name so I knew there was very little chance of HIM changing his mind. I wasn’t 100% settled on it, so I shared it to see the general reaction. I was still er-ing while signing the birth certificate but DH loved it so much that I just went ahead and named him the name he had chosen, now I couldn’t see him with another name.