I actually entirely know what you mean and agree. I was thinking about this today actually, so it’s funny that you posted this, such a coincidence!
To be honest, I did an ‘advanced search’ on a poster on this thread who hated the name Theodora and was rude about it to see whether I actually valued her opinion.
Turns out she had recently posted a thread, and when I saw the names that she described as lovely, I realised that her taste in names was ENTIRELY different to mine - her names were all a bit… well, to put it nicely I’d say a bit modern and overdone and nothing-ey. Things like ‘Dakota’ and ‘Nova’ which I just dislike and I know that none of my friends and family (the people whose opinions I care about when naming my baby) would like these names either.
So honestly based on this I just disregarded her opinion because she’s clearly just got a really different taste to me and so her opinion isn’t very helpful.
On the other hand, if the poster who hated Theodora had said they’d liked other names that I’m fond of - classic names, or names with a strong history, like you said - then I’d have maybe thought twice about the name as I’d probably have valued their opinion more as it would make me think that we perhaps had more in common her her opinion might reflect my friend’s and family’s.
As it stands, when I saw her name list I thought I was quite glad she didn’t like Theodora because the names on her list were definitely not the vibe I was going for and so it might have put me off using it 😳
It sounds awful and snobby now I write it down but I don’t mean it to. I suppose what I’m trying to say is just that I agree with you. There are people who we think we have something in common with and so we value their opinion, and there are other people who just have nothing in common with us at all/like stuff we really dislike, and so we naturally sort of shrug off their opinion.