Is the female name 桂英 outdated? Why? I suggested naming a Chinese baby girl 桂英 after her grandmother but my suggestion was rejected as the name was considered outdated. I know there is a legendary heroine named 穆桂英 and the name 桂英 is commmonly used by many Chinese ladies. The name itself sounds beautiful and bears nice meanings. Is it considered as outdated? If so, why did it lose its popularity?

By the way, if there is any statistics, I would love to know the rank of the name 桂英 by popularity among 2018 born baby girls. May I know how to find it out?
Yes, it is indeed outdated.

Moreover, you may not want to name your child after a super famous character when that person's name is not quite common, for example （武）则天、（毛）泽东、（周）恩来、（朱）元璋 and so on. Especially when you two share the same surname!

However, some more common names, especially one-character names, though may have been used by famous people, could still be used after, for example, （杨）勇、（李）密、（刘）秀、（王）勃 and so on.

Also, it is not a common practice to have children and their elder relatives using same characters in first names. We do not memorize our loved ones that way.

As for the popularity of a certain name, you may not be able to easily access that data as it not the kind of information that a government would like people to get their hands on to.

But there is a way to roughly determine whether a name is popular or not. That is, once a "type" of name is used by more and more people, it gets unpopularized! Because people want their names to stand out.

For example, around 1950s or 1960s, people tended to name their children as 解放、卫星（when the first satellite was launched by China）and then 永强、永平 in the following years. In recent years, life is becoming peace and nice, people started to name their children as 紫萱、梓萱、子轩、梓轩 and so on. But they are soon considered outdated as well! Curious on what people would come up with.