The taste for names or sounds may change, but those changes reflect underlying preferences for novelty, conformity and divergence.

Name choices, like clothing choices, reflect the desire to be different, but not too different. The ideal balance varies, and new fashions begin with innovators who want to stand out. If the innovations have the right aesthetic appeal, they spread to people who aren’t as nonconformist.(How can the Marketplace guage fashions? – NY Times (Free Registration Required))

This bit also applies to India:
Whether names or clothes, fashion reflects the primacy of individual taste over inherited custom. The freer people feel to choose names they like, rather than names of relatives or saints, the faster names go through cycles. Boys’ names, which tend to be more influenced by custom, change slower.

I think in India it is the Bengalis who have the most variety in names and Tamils the least. Bengalis have done a good job of drawing from medieval Sanskrit drama where some of the most interesting names are found (Agnimitra, Malavika,Vasavadatta Udayan) while Tamils still have to function within constraints.

Gults tend to have the most unfortunate names – I once had a prof whose first name was Subhash Chandra Bose! – this in addition to the various initials representing his caste name, father’s and grandfather’s names and the name of his ancestral village.

Thankfully, Ravikiran is still an uncommon name, so I think I’ll just name my son Ravikiran II.