Did you decide on your baby's name before they were born?

When we adopted our sons, we decided to name them after our grandfathers. Only we got them in reverse. We named the older one after my father, and the younger one after my husband's father.

We picked out names really early in my pregnancy, and told anyone that wanted to know. We had picked out Elliott for a boy, and Abigail for a girl. My brother and sister started calling the baby Abbott. lol In fact, my son is 16 months old, and my brother still calls him Abbott sometimes, because he says that is a cooler name than "Ellie" not that we call him Ellie or anything. We got a lot of grief about naming him Elliott. People were always telling us that it was strange, it was a last name not a first name, etc. A few people told us it was too girly because of the girl on Scrubs, but I've still heard of a lot more men named Elliott than women...

With my first baby, we prepared a name but it was a girl's name. I didn't have an ultrasound but I was really hoping that it would be a girl, so we prepared a name for a baby girl, so when the baby came out, I didn't have a name for him. When one of my good friend, visited me on the same day I delivered the baby, I asked her for a name..she gave me one and I liked it!! So that became my first baby's name. My second son, we came prepared!! hehehehee... I knew already it was a boy so when he came out into the world, his name is waiting for him :).

with my daughter we had 3 names we wanted.. when i was about 6 months we had picked makayla, and we told people. BBBBBBBBAAAADDDDD mistake, we got comments after comments about it mainly pertaining to " i know a makayla and shes a brat, i think its the name" well SWEET thats cool to say to a woman whos planning on naming her daughter that. well when i was about 8 months pregnant i decided that i wanted to change the name, and not tell people... well i told my mom, bad mistake because she then told everyone else, but i also add that i was sick of hearing the comments.. and when she told everyone what i was naming my daughter she added in that, so i got NO comments.. with the next i dont plan on telling anyone till she is born.. but if its a boy everyone knows the name, because he will be named after my BFs dad, and i KNOW i wont get comments about that

Yes, with both of my children the names were picked before they were born. I actually didn't name either of them the name that I wanted as no one else wanted it. I wanted a daughter named Amanda but I did choose other names for both of my children and I did get the middle name that I had chosen. Compromise is the name of the game I guess.

We had a girl name picked out before we were even pregnant. It was a variation on my name. While we were pregnant we spent a long time trying to pick a boy name, and finally came up with 3 when I was about 7 months along. We figured if it was a boy we'd decide which name to use after the birth -- to see which name was best suited. We actually weren't going to do a middle name if it was a boy. We didn't find out the gender, because we wanted to be surprised. It turned out to be a boy, and we ended up using two of the names we'd picked as his first and middle name. I'm glad we didn't use the 3rd name (Aidan) since that was the name of the little boy in The Ring, and now there are a lot of little Aidans running around. So we had names more or less chosen, but we didn't know the gender, so telling people the names didn't really matter.

We did choose the name before they were born and told people, but I understand why some people choose not to. Some may prefer it be a suprise, and others want to avoid the negative comments. There are always some people who like to butt in and try to insult a parent's choice in names hoping to make them name the child what the other person wants.