I am not expecting (yet;) ) but with my son, we announced his name as soon as we agreed on it. I think this go around that I want to keep it a secret until the baby is born, and maybe refer to the baby as it’s initial.
What have you done in the past - what would you do in the future with sharing your baby’s name?
With DD#1 we announced it as soon as we chose. Big regret, everyone hated it and I started second guessing it 
There was also no surprise when she arrived. Everyone knew she’d be a girl, knew her name, and at my last midwife appointment I was given a weight estimate that turned out to be very accurate. So there was no surprise.
With DD#2, we couldn’t decide on a name, so wait till she arrived to name her. I much preferred doing it this way, everyone was eager to know what she’d be called and because everyone was so taken with her, not many commented on the “weird” name I’d chosen 
In future, I definitely won’t be announcing baby’s name till she arrives
I’m thinking of announcing either at the baby shower, or when the baby’s born. I think that it would be fun to come up with some kind of fun and interesting way to tell people at the baby shower, but would love to see the surprise if we announced on the day the kid was born. Also, I know my name taste is super different from my families, so I would be sidestepping the weird name comments if i wait for the baby to be born.
I would probably wait until the baby was born, because then I won’t have to face the families discontent with the name which is apt to happen! They will be so enthralled with the sweet LO that they won’t mind what the name is, whereas if you announce it beforehand they might try to talk you out of it.
I like Dantea’s idea of announcing at the baby shower. But my family hates most of the names that I love, so maybe it would just be best to wait until the baby is born to announce it.
Likely we won’t be announcing any full names of any of our kids until we have a baby in our arms, we have, less than mainstream tastes and don’t want to hear negative opinions.
A thought though, is to announce the Initials at the baby shower and make it a game for people to guess what the first and middle name might be! That would be fun!
I’m just a teenager, so not a mother yet and not going to be a mother in a near future, but I think it would be really cute if I could call my baby by a bump name like Honeybee.
My son’s name is [name]Noah[/name] and everyone liked it a lot, it being a strong Bible name and having rising popularity when I was expecting. I love the name [name]Eleanor[/name] but it is not popular here at ALL (I’ve met one [name]Eleanor[/name] ever in my life and she is about 4). I ask a teenager girl I am close to what she thought of the name and she basically said “eww”. I told my mother I liked [name]Esme[/name] and she made it quite clear how much she disliked the name. I’d like to avoid THOSE kind of comments
I think it would be the fun surprise that comes with the delivery, since we will want to know the gender.
We probably won’t tell before the birth, just because I’m really indecisive and likely won’t feel 100% sure about a decision before the baby arrives anyway. And I don’t like revealing my decisions about things unless I’m 100% sure I’m going to follow through. My family isn’t pushy about knowing names before the birth, so at least I know I won’t have my side of the family hounding me for answers, haha.
My #1 boy name is [name]Edmund[/name] and everyone who knows me knows that, so for my first boy (if I ever have one), everyone can expect to know the name from day 1, as long as my husband agrees.
I am a firm believer in not announcing the name until the baby is born. That way, everyone else can keep their opinions to themselves and no one can “steal” your name before baby arrives.
Well, I would be asking friends and family opinions on names that I like. I’d probably tell close friends and family when I know FOR SURE that I’m going to be using that name, but I’m probably not going to know for sure until I’m leaving the hospital. I would tell close friends and family after I’ve chosen a name and there’s no going back. I know a lot of people that send a card out to everyone that they know announcing the baby with details about the birthday, weight, and name of the baby.
I hadn’t even thought of that! This is a great idea.
I would probably wait until I was deffiently sure (since I change my mind constantly,) or until after the baby was born. Of course, I’m terrible at keeping secrets, so I might blurt it out in an instant. I do have a cousin who’s pregnant, and we thought she would announce the name at her baby shower. But she wants to keep it a surprise until it’s born in [name]June[/name]. It’s been driving us all crazy trying to guess, lol.
When I was pregnant I told the name I picked to whoever asked. I was so excited cause I found the ‘perfect’ name…[name]Nina[/name] [name]Beatrice[/name]. Well, my pregnant [name]SIL[/name] ‘stole’ the name and I was devastated! I didn’t want to use it because our daughter would have the same full name and be the same age! I’m in NY and they’re in NJ, but you never know- by the time my little girl is in kindergarten I might be sick of the city and move to my husband’s home town and we have identity confusion! After that I went back and forth between using [name]Nina[/name] [name]Beatrice[/name] anyway, using [name]Beatrice[/name] or a few other possibilities like [name]Suzanna[/name] or [name]Annette[/name]. [name]Way[/name] down the list was [name]Leonie[/name] and my husband got obsessed with it. We settled on [name]Leonie[/name] [name]Simone[/name] but didn’t tell anyone until she was here! It was fun calling her our bump names-her nicknames were [name]Kiki[/name] and Taz!
We announced the name when we decided on it, then we changed our mind! I don’t know what we are going to do this time. I want to avoid the negative comments, but I am also pretty bad at secrets. We still have 7 weeks until we find out the gender, so we have some time to decide.
I really like the idea mentioned of announcing initials if you’re set on a name. I know a couple that sorta did something similar. She posted a few maternity photos and had blocks with the baby’s initials and from the comments I assume they hadn’t announced the name. I thought it was kinda cool to see the guesses. It would be a fun baby shower game!
But I’m still not sure what I’m going to do when I have kids. As of right now (still a while before kids), I want to narrow it down and decide at the hospital. But who knows… I may change my mind and I don’t know what my fiance prefers!
I don’t think I’ll have the self-control to keep it a secret when I do eventually have kids, but at the same time it bothers me when people announce a name and then change their minds. Not because of me, but I had a friend who announced that her son’s name would be [name]Caleb[/name] [name]Tyler[/name]… everything at his baby shower was monogrammed or pre-printed with his name or ‘[name]Welcome[/name] [name]Caleb[/name]’, then after he was born they decided to name him [name]Daniel[/name] and I kept wondering what it would be like for him growing up and having to wonder why his favorite baby blanket was monogrammed [name]Caleb[/name].
I had such a terrible experience with my third pregnancy (second boy) in the naming department. I had a name I loved ([name]Milo[/name] pronounced ME-LOW) and everybody hated it, and were soooo negative about it that they completely ruined the name for me. When I came up with lists and lists of names all of those were likewise shredded. I got very angry and very bitter about it and finally in the end (about a week or two to go) I picked a new name and didn’t share it with anybody until after the baby was born. I found out that once the baby is born nobody wants to be so impolite that they tell you to your face that they hate your name choice.
But waiting is also beneficial in the sense that you could change your mind at the last minute.
We announced the name while I was pregnant with our first child, and we won’t do it again with this one. People can be unbelievably rude, especially family members. They’re a lot less likely to object after the baby is born.
We have done it differently with each of our four. The initials-at-the-baby-shower game is a fun idea, but I’m afraid people would think you were super obnoxious if they didn’t get to find out at the end of the shower.
With our first we never really decided on his name until about a week before he was born, and changed the middle name once we met him. We had been throwing around an unusual name the whole pregnancy though, so some people were really surprised when we actually used it, and some people were not surprised at all.
Second baby I was well into the third trimester before I found the name. I thought I told the whole family, but 6 years later only my mom says she knew! So I guess we only told the parents.
Third baby we didn’t announce anything AT ALL because we chose her name super early and were dead set on it ([name]Eve[/name]). But that Pixar [name]Wall[/name]-E movie came out at the same time and all my younger teen siblings were going around saying “EEEEVAAAA” in that annoying robot voice. I was super paranoid that she would get stuck with that robot nickname instead of the nn we wanted ([name]Evie[/name]) so we didn’t breathe a word of it until she showed up. It made everyone crazy, lol.
This time it took forever to decide on something we liked but we did tell the immediate family a few weeks ago, about a month before the due date. We thought they might want some time to get used to it, lol. They are good about not being rude though, I think they are prepared for something obscure and unusual at this point.