Why would you “honour” someone and give their name to a child?

I agree with your point on children having their own identity and being their own person.
My middle names are after both of my grandmothers and I love that I have a little bit of them in my name. But my first name is unique within my family.
I in turn did the same for my daughter, we gave her a name that we loved that wasn't a family name. But we then gave her middle names after family members. One of those names was after our first daughter who we sadly lost and we felt that we wanted our second daughter to have a little bit of her big sister with her. My daughters other middle name is my mum's name. Our family as a whole had a tough few years and my mum really held us together and I wanted to show our appreciation, my mum was very touched by the gesture.
It's not for everyone and I know a lot of people just choose names that they like the sound of but for me personally, I like names to have meaning behind them and I like the idea of passing on a little bit of history. Who knows, my daughter may grow up and hate it but the same could be said for anyone's given name!

We used some of our grandparents names (or modern versions of) for our DC middle names. We just thought it would be nice for our parents and I don't care too much about middle names tbh!

Humans have valued lineage and legacy as long as they have had language.

Surnames are passed down. Maiden surnames are passed down as first and middle names. First names are passed down.

People want to belong to something and they want to know that the spirit of people they love will live on in some way.

You don't want to. That's fine. Others do. That's fine too.