When teaching we teachers observed that children's names sealed their fate. Top set children's names observed the middle class law:- that they were drawn from traditional English sources. These mostly comprised names from the bible, Shakespeare, the Brontes (their own names and that of their characters), the classics, English kings and queens, Scotland or Wales if traditional, Jane Austen and other notable but traditional literary origins. Sometimes there would be a fashion for something like English Victorian names like Lily or Mabel and the boys' names were often traditional but shortened, for expample Sam or Ben. Nevertheless, these were the names that seemed to go along with parental interest and whose owners ended up doing well.
The bottom sets often contained exotic names which matched modern celebrities or passing phases. They had random spellings too.
I am not inventing this, merely passing on an observation made over 34 years of teaching. When one of my own children graduated at a good university doing a solid traditional subject her 150 peers for that subject all had names from the 'middle class rule book'. There were five Jessicas and four with my child's name. I was astonished at how the 'rule' had prevailed despite fashion and, especially, political correctness. My guess is that while much virtue signalling goes on in public, in private nothing has changed and that people really know, as they used to say, 'which end is up'.
A test that used to be made was the 'could he/ she be prime minister with this name?' Margaret, Anthony, Gordon, Edward (or Ed) and David all cut the mustard being dull, solid, dependable and traditional. A name is a signal of intent to the world, seemingly.
