What’s in a name?

Since announcing our pregnancy there have been two key things people are desperate to know: do we know the gender and have we picked a name? The answer is yes and yes. That doesn’t mean we necessarily want to shout this from the roof top. Since finding out our babies gender we have only told family, a few select friends, and then people who have specifically asked us. When it comes to names, we’ve kept our final choice mostly to ourselves (the exception being those who were privy to earlier discussions regarding our shortlist – though we’ve not confirmed anything to anyone!).

 

Why aren’t we sharing all this information on every social media platform we are part of? Privacy. Never in my life have I felt such a strong urge for personal space and, I repeat, privacy. There are a group of people that seem to believe that a pregnancy is public property: it’s not unnatural, we see animals that are intensely curious when a new baby arrives, but it’s not for me.

 

I’ve been told it’s a part of nesting: this strangely protective urge towards a human that isn’t even born yet. Some have expressed frustration at my ‘secrecy’ as though my desire for privacy is a personal slight against their trustworthiness. This isn’t the case but there are plenty of reasons why our baby’s name won’t be disclosed until we make our big announcement.

 

1. In our early days of excitement, we drafted a list of names we liked. We had a firm favourite, it wasn’t a common name but it wasn’t outlandish. It wasn’t in the realms of ‘River’, or ‘Rocket’, or ‘Bear’, or ‘Florencia’. When we shared our choice, it went down like a lead balloon: people initially said it was nice, then backtracked later and said they hated it. Perhaps we should have stuck to our guns but we wanted people to be as excited as we were. We’ve had similar issues with many other names we’ve tossed into the playing field and so now we’re keeping our choice to ourselves.

 

2. My husband keeps changing his mind. We had five names on the short list: we picked one and then three days later he decided he preferred a different name on the list. This kept happening until we ran out of names. With no new suggestions from my better half, we’ve had to go back through the list.

 

3. We want to see what baby looks like! I often wonder how people decide that they’re going to call a baby Neil or Derek or Mary. We’ve got a name but it might not fit our baby on the day: it would be a bit embarrassing to have to tell everyone we’ve changed the name at the last minute.

 

 

4. I don’t want someone to steal the name. If you think this isn’t a thing then I strongly urge you to spend five minutes on an online Mum Forum. If you want to see a group of women turn into feral cats – that is where you’ll find it.