I might have a wee bit of enlightenment on this. I work with kids’ names: I make personalised decorative name signs, and my orders over the last year for baby nursery and younger children shows a subtle turn in the tide from ‘creative’ , spelt in phonetic rather than correct way, show-off, ‘I want to be unique’ type names to far more classic, Victorian and Edwardian names.
I make a lot of Mabel, Olive, Agatha, Albert, Reuben, ...
And much less Chantanelle, Jaydon, Amelia-Rose, Kaden, Ka$H,...
And yep, Kash was spelt with a dollar sign instead of an S. That child’s life must be mapped out for him already.
I think people are gradually becoming fed up of the whole celebrity over sharing, turning themselves inside-out on social media for the whole world to see their innards, i’m so unique yet somehow I’ve styled myself to look like every other person who thinks they’re unique too, ....
There’s also an Ernie in my son’s junior school class and he’s one of the cool little kids!
Leopold just brings to mind Belgium or Russia for me, and our country has an Eastern European or two in every classroom now with their (especially the Lithuanians) names that look like they’ve been shook up in a hat and too many vowels have fell out! So kids are growing up used to unusual names with their friends.