Thread: Is it selfish to...

Not want to share the potenial baby names with your friends and family? DH and I are not planning on finding out the sex of the baby (atleast for now). My thought is we would decide three names of each gender we like, and then once we meet our baby we could decide on the right name. I am afraid I will get my heart set on one name, take a look at my baby and decide she/he does not look like that name at all. Does that sound silly?

As well, I love our familes but I don't want them trying to influence our names. I know it sounds crazy. I would hope even if they did not like the name we chose once they saw it attached to a beautiful baby there would be nothing to say about it. I don't think our families would ever say "we don't like..." more so they would try and persuade us with "what about this name.. it is so nice". Same with our friends.

Am I being childish? (be honest I can take it)

No you are not being childish. We found out the sex of both ours and told everyone, I didn't understand keeping that a secret. But with our second we did keep the name a secret, exactly for the reasons you stated. Everyone has an opinion, and is not afraid to share it.

i don't think you're being childish at all. we're kinda doing the same thing. the one time i mentioned names i like to someone, she was completely disgusted with all of them and then offered me names she felt would be better (Mildred?).
i think you're better off keeping them to yourself; that way you can fall in love with a name or a few names and not have to worry about other people's criticisms.

Nope, I don't think it's selfish. I think I would just tell people we hadn't decided on a name yet and had an extensive list that wasn't worth going through.

For DD1 we decided on her name on the way home from the ultrasound. After I started telling people we got a lot of "oooh! Like in Shrek!" Hadn't even occurred to me. haha. But I was SUPER attached to the name, and I don't care if my mother would have said "that's a horrible name and I won't ever call her by it", I would have stuck to her name.

DD2 we went round and round until about 26 weeks and decided on her name. Again, I didn't tell anyone until we were SET and if someone would have told me it was a horrible name I wouldn't have cared.

This time we have our boys name, and will tell anyone that asks. Our girls name is pretty set, but not a definite. We've told our mothers and my SIL, and that's it. I'll wait until after 20 weeks to tell anyone else (other than the internet. ) when I'm 100% sure that I can live with whatever horrible things people might say

Oh, and my grandmother did try to say my DD2 middle name was "nice, but there are a lot of "nice" names out there, why don't you pick something else" I just smiled and told her we had decided. This time she said "Please pick a name that is easier for your grandfather to remember than 'Rowynn'" which is ridiculous, because he has a bit of dementia and I'm certain that most names would give him problems.

ETA: Our boys name is actually the name of a bar where DH grew up/I went to college. I'm sure we'll get lots of "interesting comments" but it's really just a happy coincidence that I realized after I LOVED the name.

When I was pg with DS we had shared our "list" with family and friends and a lot of people either said, "why would you pick that name", or "ehh I don't like it, how about ..." We got super POed. Like how dare you make that comment...its not like we were thinking of oddball names, they were normal! lol Our favorites were Miles (DS) and Lily. We've already kinda mentioned some names to DH's brother and didn't get good comments back at all, so our lips are sealed with this LO! Although I might share them with you guys!

We didn't share what the sex or names were, just said "we know but we are keeping it to ourselves!" We'll do the same again but maybe not with the sex this time. For the people that really pushed we would say "for a boy Fritz, for a girl Helge" and that always stopped the questions. I have heard too many stories of people telling a name and then someone else would "steal it" so we keep it quiet

Thanks Ladies. This makes me feel better about our decision. For a second, I was feeling a bit bad. We did tell our families we would not be sharing our choices. They seemed to take it okay. I think it went over easier as we are not finding out the sex.

We did exactly what you did with our first, though we did know the sex. We didn't want to pick a name for her until we saw her! And even when we saw her, we still went over a few of our extra choices

We did not find out the sex and we only had one boy name that we could agree on. We shared it and then named him something else once we saw him. The name just did not fit him. The second time we did not share any names. Don't feel bad for not sharing.

My mother was slightly offended when I told her recently that I wasn't going to tell her the baby's name until it was born. I told her we may not even let her know what the sex is, either. I wasn't saying it to be mean. I want to make it even more of a surprise for her especially since we plan on using her name as a middle name if it's a girl. If anything, I think I'm providing free entertainment to my family. They'll keep guessing and suggesting until the baby is born. I might break down and tell her the sex but I'm tempted not to do so. She and my sister both seem absolutely certain that I'm having a boy because they just imagine me with a son. So I think I might just keep them guessing out of pure mischievousness.