Ro60
When I was in high school for some odd reason my friend & I thought the name Amelia was soo old fashioned & hilarious - would have us in fits of laughter.
Now it's a popular name I can't imagine what caused the amusement.
One of my grandmothers was Amelia. The other was Hannah. When I was little I thought they were fusty old-lady names, and both were young women by the time Queen Victoria died. Both names have become very fashionable since.
I think we're probably all influenced by people we have known, especially in childhood. For a long time I had a downer on Rachels even though I've known some lovely Rachels (and the less common but more authentic Rachael) and I suspect that it's because the Rachels I knew in childhood were "goody-goodies"!
Amelia, Hannah, Emily or Alice may have come back into fashion but for some reason names like Ethel or Bertha never do. I wonder why?
Some precious stones - Ruby, Emerald, Pearl - come back but Beryl never does (despite my teenage hero Beryl Burton, novelist Beryl Bainbridge and the wonderful Beryl Reid). Sapphire has never really been, I think, it seems to belong to drag queens, and I've never heard of a Zircon (I refuse to accept diamonds and would always rather have a nice zircon instead, though nobody is offering me either these days!