On my husband's side of the family, it seems that his Sevierville Tennessee ancestors (early 1800's) believed strongly in carrying on family names. It often seems to me that every male Atchley felt obligated to name a male child Daniel. It's also some great coincidence that they all seem to be about the same age too!!
MY family seemed to have a John P Gray obsession. Not just John Gray, mind you, but John P Gray.
My Holloway family seems to have found a way to differentiate between all the Jim Holloways in the county in the mid to late 1800's. This isn't helping me much genealogically, but it seemed to help them, as listed in a letter provided to me by a cousin (the notes in parenthesis are also from the letter):
1) Sour Jim
2) Negro Jim (dark complected)
3) Squirrel Jim
4) Gallon Jim (sold whiskey, dry goods, groceries and hardware)
It's hard enough to figure out what the real names were for Fannie and Dicey and Clint [they were Mary Frances, don't know yet, and Chittenden].
Then there was Willard Oliver Towne, who went by Willard for the first half of his life in Vermont and after the move to Ohio, decided to go by Oliver.
There were all those years I searched for Wiley Jones (not that Jones isn't hard enough on it's own), then I found where he witnessed the will of a friend as Thomas Wiley Jones. Now I need to go back and look for Thomas Jones in all those "Wiley places".
That's the fun of this hobby though isn't it?