I agree with you however there is the point of the person in question having already established themselves. The new friend with the once-tainted name already

I agree with you however there is the point of the person in question having already established themselves. The new friend with the once-tainted name already has a personality/life-experience they can use to enforce your new view of that name. A new baby has no self identity as yet and will be largely shaped by the parental interactions. As a parent, I didn't want my poor perception of a name to negatively affect in any minute conscious or unconscious way how I interact with my newborn child. Extreme? Yeah. But parents tend to get a bit extreme on some aspect or other when it comes to their kids and I figured that - as you say - it's just a name. If my extreme is to simply rule out names I don't like, then that's not so bad.