"When people find out you’re pregnant, there’s three things that typically happen. First, the congratulations. Second, asking whether you’re having a boy or a girl. And third, asking if you have a name figured out or at least a short list of names to consider.
I was floored by how many times people asked if we had a baby name picked out when I was barely even showing. Then I remained mystified by the barrage of interest about what we were going to name our baby throughout my pregnancy.
‘Have you picked a name yet?’ was one of the first questions our labor and delivery nurse asked us when we arrived at the hospital. Our baby girl was only a few hours old when the nurses started talking about filling out her birth certificate. A task they said needed to be completed before we left the hospital.
My husband and I luckily had our “say yes to the dress moment” after our front-runner baby name suited our new addition perfectly. We filled out the birth certificate with no qualms.
But what if you aren’t sure about a name? What if your baby is born and they don’t look like the name you envisioned for them? What if you name your baby something in the hospital and regret it?
Here’s a little-known secret: You can leave the hospital without naming your baby if you want to test out different baby names before committing. Read on for advice on how to test out baby names, what to do if you’re still unsure about a name when it’s time to leave the hospital, and what to do if you want to change your baby’s name on their birth certificate.
Naming your baby is important—and stressful.
Picking a name for your baby is a big deal. There’s a lot of pressure to get it ‘right’ since it’s something that will live with them forever, and it can be stressful to be in the newly postpartum haze and to feel like you have to make a life-long decision quickly.
In a recent Instagram post with more than 11 million views, influencer Jenna Greer illustrated the stress that a lot of new parents feel when they’re in the hospital and undecided about their baby’s name.
“This girl was born 24 hours ago and still has no name,” she says. “Before we can go home, she needs a name. I need all of your favorite girl names. Pronto.” Comments were eventually turned off, but not before close to 80,000 well-wishers weighed in with different name ideas. She later shared her new baby’s name in a follow-up post: Nova June.
How long can you wait to name your baby?
“We had agreed on one name, but my postpartum brain didn’t like it at first because it felt too plain for the grandiose experience I had just had giving birth to him,” says mom Lindsay Perkinson about why she left the hospital without a name for her baby boy, but says she decided on a name quickly after leaving.
“I called the hospital the day after leaving and let them know we had decided on a name, and they filled the certificate out, and it was super easy!” she says about the process. Some hospitals require that you come back in person, so double-check the process before leaving.
Can you leave the hospital without naming your baby?
“Birth Certificates are initiated at the hospital setting after birth of an infant,” says Maria Orozco, the manager for labor and delivery at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, New Jersey. “Parents do have the option to be discharged prior to naming their infant. However, parents will need to return to the hospital or go to the registrar’s office to complete the birth certificate.”
Each state has a different grace period for how long you have to finish filling out the birth certificate after you leave, so you’ll need to ask your hospital what the policy is. In Texas and New Jersey, a parent needs to come back to the hospital within five days to finish filling out the birth certificate. In North Carolina, a parent has up to 10 days.
What happens if you miss the deadline?
If you don’t come back to fill out your baby’s birth certificate within the allocated time, Orozco explains that the hospital will release the birth certificate to the local registrar’s office. At that point, she says the birth certificate would have Baby Boy or Baby Girl as the first name and the birthing person’s last name. Parents would then need to request a change to their child’s birth certificate to update the name.
Testing out a name is better than having baby name regret.
Sophia Khim, CEO of Nameberry, says she often receives panicked emails from parents feeling like they need to pick a name before they leave the hospital and that nearly 40 percent of the baby name consults that she and her team do stem from parents having baby name regret.
“I think one of the biggest contributing factors to name regret is really feeling rushed at the end,” she says, elaborating that parents often tell her something along the lines of “I felt pressure to pick a name, and this is the one I chose in the hospital, but if I had sat with it and thought about it for a few days more, a week more, I wouldn’t have come to the same conclusion.”
She recommends that parents who are on the fence about a name for their baby take more time to test out different names to make sure it’s one they’re confident with, even if it means leaving the hospital without a name.
Kristen, a mom of three boys, says they left the hospital without a name for their second son. “I was worried about committing to a name and that he wouldn’t fit that name,” she says. She and her husband agreed on one a few days later, after they’d had time to test out a few names at home.
How to test out different baby names.
“I would say roughly 10-20 percent of patients show up like me, not fully settled on a name until after their baby arrives,” says Liesel Teen of Mommy Labor Nurse. Teen says it’s common for people to come to the hospital with a shortlist of two to three names that they could test on their new baby after they were born.
“I actually named both of my boys a few hours before leaving the hospital,” she says. “My husband and I both felt like we had to see our babies before settling on a name.”
Before the baby arrives, you can test different names by saying the name out loud and using it in sentences. Spend a few days using a potential name to really get an understanding of if you like it or not. My husband and I also tried to list out all the potential nicknames we could see our daughter having based on her name to make sure we didn’t hate any of them.
After meeting your baby, you can also try calling them different names to see what feels the best to you, and you can elicit feedback from others at the hospital.
Mom Ana Maria tested different names while she was in the hospital by crowdsourcing feedback from all of the nursing staff. “We put our top three names on the whiteboard in the hospital room and had staff vote as they came in and out of the room,” she says. “It helped so much, and the staff loved it!”
How to change a baby’s name on their birth certificate.
You’ll need to request a birth certificate amendment form from your state’s vital records department to update the birth certificate with the correct name if you miss the window for naming your baby after they’re born. In most states, this is pretty easy to do by filling out some paperwork. You can typically find the form you’ll need by googling “birth certificate amendment form” and your state.
If you’ve got major baby name regret, it is possible to change the name you gave your baby in the hospital. The process varies state by state, but the good news is that in most instances, if your baby isn’t 1 yet, you won’t have to get a court order to change their name.
If your baby has turned 1, things typically become a bit more complicated and require going to court plus jumping through a few extra hoops to legally change their name. As someone who recently changed their legal first name, I can tell you this process isn’t for the faint of heart, but it is worth it if you feel strongly that your baby has the wrong moniker.
Choosing a baby name is important. Take the extra time to test out names if you’re feeling rushed or pressured in the hospital to land a name, and know that changing your baby’s name is possible.
That said, Kihm also likes to remind parents struggling with choosing the perfect name that more times than not, “your child will grow to fit a name, and over time your child’s identity will merge with that name.”
Elliott Harrell, Contributing Writer
Elliott is a mom of two little girls and is based in Raleigh, NC. She spends her days running a sales team and doing laundry and her nights writing about the things that she loves. She’s passionate about all things motherhood and women’s health. When she’s not working, writing or parenting you can find her trying a new restaurant in town or working on her latest needlepoint project.