A baptism for an unnamed child

[Gerry_R]

Re my last post: The fourth died at sea.... To clarify, I should have written:  the youngest of the three surviving children who left Ireland.

[Maiden Stone]

Thanks for your thoughts, Maiden Stone.

With regard to birth order, this child was the second of four born in Ireland: 1843, 1845, 1846, and about 1849.

If it was the 2nd child of a first marriage and if the parents were following a traditional Irish naming pattern, the baby was likely to have been called after a grandparent.
Another thought I had was that the gender of the baby was unclear at birth so a name hadn't been chosen. Rare but not impossible.
Most likely explanation is that the priest had forgotten the baby's name when he got around to writing up the register.

[Gerry_R]

Thanks, Maiden Stone.

From all the responses I have had to my enquiry, there seem to be a number of possible explanations, some more remote than others.

I guess I have to make a tentative decision towards the one that seems to me most likely, while keeping the other possible explanations open.

The fact that the Catholic Church reserves baptism for the living seems to rule out stillbirth, although Gaffy's point that baptism could be carried out if the child was "at risk of imminent death, including cases of doubt (ie. uncertain if alive, but where there might be the slightest chance)." Further, I note the high infant mortality around that time in Ireland - something over 20% - so I am leaning towards the possibility that the child's death was imminent and baptism was given with no regard for recording the niceties of a name and gender. The fact that this child did not come up in any later records leads me towards that explanation rather than the minister forgetting the child's name, or the parents not having a name chosen.

Thank you everyone for your help.

I am satisfied to close this post now.