White parents do it for status. You want your kid to be successful in life. This depends a lot upon popularity amongst the upper middle class and up. There's a lot of conformity amongst those groups. One afternoon amongst suburban moms will teach you this.

So now, you have a situation where you have to confirm to a standard and yet also stand out and not be a carbon copy.

Changing the spelling of familiar names is a perfect way to accomplish this. And it worked too. You got the notice without the prejudice. In school, the teachers ignore Ashley, but Ashleigh even gets a heart over that I. She gets called on, smiled at, favored, extra attention, extra help, all the things.

It worked on the kid's peers too. Ashleigh is just a little bit special and anyone who expresses any kind of resentment over the unwarranted attention Ashleigh gets is just jealous.

Oftentimes, Ashleigh gets a big head.

But everybody's doing it now so now it's become the conformity thing. Everybody has to have a PrimeTime name. If you don't, people won't even bother to remember your name. Popular people set trends, plebes follow trends. Trends tend toward extremes. Elon Musk names his children in the same fashion he names his rockets. X-blahblahblah.

Personally, I felt these names were always a parenting cop out. Like, you're using a psychological cheat code because you already know beforehand you're not going to invest enough time and love into your child to ensure they have a personality and character strong and attractive enough to others to be worth remembering.

Just saying; and obviously, that applies to the white suburban set only, where I first ran into this phenomenon.

I get it about unusual names being a protection against racial profiling and racism in general. That's smart. Strategic.

For my child, I paired an old name that has fallen away from. Popularity and isn't widely known anymore, basic spelling, with a family name version that is more common and familiar. In the South, it's common for certain female names to be repeated down the family line, especially if there are multiple versions of the name.

That way, she has the benefit of classy and traditional and unique and individual. She can use one name professionally if she feels like it's more advantageous, and the other will be more advantageous in her personal life.