I think I didn’t get my Hebrew name until my bris, but my English name was done right away.
But I can’t think of anyone giving out a name before the birth. My daughter and her husband didn’t even want to know the sex of the baby before birth. They had names picked out, of course, but didn’t tell us.
Seconded. There are so few genuine surprises when it comes to babies anymore (for good and healthy reasons, of course) that keeping one close to one’s chest must feel precious.
This seems like a good excuse to tell this story. I’ve changed all the names, although I’ve tried to keep the flavor of the pivotal one.
A friend of mine, Brittany, had a cousin, Amy, who was born a week before her. Of course, it was expected that they would grow up as best friends, and that might have happened except Amy, from early childhood, based her whole identity on copying and one-upping Brittany. Whatever Brittany wanted for her birthday, Amy wanted. And since her birthday was a week earlier, she got it sooner. If Brittany got a new outfit, Amy got the same thing. Brittany did not want to dress like twins. It didn’t help that they had the same last name and were in the same class and looked enough alike many people assumed they were fraternal twins.
All through grade school and into high school this continued. Amy tried to steal Brittany’s friends. If she found out Brittany liked a boy, she made a play for him. And so on. When it came time for junior prom, Brittany got a dress from a local shop. Amy immediately started asking to see the dress. Brittany, who didn’t want to go as twins to the prom, declined to show it to her, but Amy managed to ferret out certain details, including where it had come from. The shops all kept a registry to avoid girls experiencing the faux pas of wearing the same gown as someone else. Amy went to the shop and told them, “My cousin Brittany got the cutest blue strapless dress here, and I want one just like it, and it’ll be fine because we go to different schools.” It worked, and Amy showed up in the same gown.
When it came time for senior prom, Brittany’s mother took her, at no small expense, out of state to find a dress not available locally. In the meantime, there was a running joke among Brittany’s friends (all of whom had had to actively resist Amy’s attempt at poaching them) that she should get a decoy dress, some really hideous concoction from a thrift shop to send Amy on a desperate wild goose chase.
Eventually, they finished school. When they were in their early 20s, Brittany and her high school boyfriend decided to get married. Amy immediately became engaged to a guy she’d dated for about 6 months. She then set her wedding date for a week before Brittany’s, at the same venue, and of course used the same color scheme and same style of dress. By this point Brittany had matured enough to just roll her eyes.
Then Brittany got pregnant. And so did Amy. But in this case, Amy hadn’t copied off her. She was due a few weeks before Brittany. And they were both having girls.
Amy immediately began badgering Brittany, asking her, “What are you going to name the baby?”
There was no FREAKING way Brittany was going to let Amy steal the baby name she and her husband had chosen. They told no one, not even the grandparents. (Her parents understood, but her in-laws were puzzled. “Oh, surely she wouldn’t?” Her husband said, “No, trust us on this one.”)
Amy kept on. “What are you going to name the baby? Why won’t you tell me? You think I’m going to steal it, don’t you? sob Why don’t you trust me?”
And finally Brittany had had enough. She was in the uncomfortable late stages of pregnancy and she was sick of it. Remembering the joke about the decoy prom dress, she decided what she needed was a decoy name. Something outrageous, yet just plausible. “Ok,” she said. “I’ll tell you, but you have to promise you won’t use it.”
“Oh, I promise.”
“Cerulean.” (She had no idea where she’d yanked that one out of.)
“Cerulean?”
“Cerulean Blue,” Brittany confirmed. “It’s my favorite color.”
“I like it…it’s different.”
And so, a few weeks later, Brittany visited Amy in the hospital. “I hope you don’t mind…it just fit her. She’s a Cerulean.”
“No, it’s ok,” Brittany said.
Her baby was born not long after, and she and her husband named her Isabelle, just as they’d planned. She still feels guilty over getting her cousin’s daughter named Cerulean, though.
It’s honey-sauce, but don’t tell her I told you.
I’ve know both people who didn’t want to tell the name, and others who answered “because!” when asked why. The second one would have saved my brother Ed and his wife a lot of headaches, and our side of the family quite a few bad moments.
The feet-not-touching the ground is an old-fashioned Balinese practice - not the standard for all of Indonesia. Anyway, Balinese babies come “pre-named” because there is a system of four names: oldest is Wayan, next is Made, then Nyoman, then Ketut (and then they start repeating).
We had boy and girl names prepared for both of ours.
We didn’t know the sex of either and damn sure we weren’t going to tell anyone the names we’d thought of either. It was absolutely no-one elses business.
“are you having a boy or a girl?” they’d ask.
“don’t know and don’t care” we’d reply.
When my daughter was in the gestational chamber, my reply to the question was always along the lines of, “how can we have a name, we haven’t even met her?”
I like that. One guy I used to know called his preborn baby “Baby X”. I at least gave mine a name: “Boris”. My wife still doesn’t forgive me for that. Especially since we had a daughter.
I still think “Boris” is better than “Baby X” though.
We called ours “Baby to be named later”
We called him Tater. When That Woman didn’t like the name we chose for him, on the phone to me in the hospital the evening of my emergency general anesthesia c-section she said “Well I’ll just call him Tater.”
Which sucks because now we can’t call him that because fuck her and it was a sweet little nickname.
This was exactly us with our first.
Andy L is my husband. Once our son was born, we were so used to saying that that my MIL said, “HE HAS A NAME.” (Which she really liked, BTW.)
We didn’t say the baby’s name or sex before birth because we thought that would be more fun.
We had a boy and girl name picked, but we didn’t care to know the baby’s sex ahead of time. We didn’t keep either name a secret and no one in the family gave us any kind of grief. My coworker kept addressing my belly as Peter and fortunately, it didn’t confuse Sarah when she was born. 
I don’t have kids, but at one time I thought I might, so my husband and I used to talk about what to name one in the event we did. After many hours of discussion, we’d settled on a unisex name that we both absolutely loved and didn’t deviate from it for years and years. And since I’ve never really had a lot of female friends, I had no idea there was a thing about women ‘stealing’ others’ baby names. So, I shared with my best friend at the time. Who later became pregnant. Then, without telling me throughout the entire time, called me after the birth and said she’d named her baby daughter with our future baby name. That she’s never heard before.
Yep, that went exactly as well as you think it would. Of course, now in fairness, it makes no difference, but I certainly would never dream of doing that to someone else, so I’d wholeheartedly endorse not sharing the name up front anymore.
This is actually the one situation where I’ve heard of people suggesting to share the name–to make sure the kids don’t wind up with the same name and it becomes confusing. It’s one thing I’ve noticed. iIt’s really rare to see cousins with the same name–almost as rare as siblings.
I think it’s perfectly fine for parents to want to keep it to themselves but there’s no need to be rude about. The vast majority of the time the people who ask questions are just being polite and showing an interest. I doubt very much that they’re kicking off the sheets wondering what the new baby’s name will be. A simple, we haven’t decided yet would suffice.
You know sibs with the same first name?
Where you from?
Aren’t George Forman’s kids all named George?
We didn’t reveal names pre birth because of my judgemental family. If we had announced a name, it would have been deemed a stupid name and there would have been long discussions about it. If there’s already a named baby, we just had to deal with a handful of snide comments. Those of you with friendlier families might have had different experiences though!
Oh believe me, my inlaws were. We got passive aggressive cards.