The problem in the font naming world, essentially, is the same thing which has been so great in so many other ways: accessibility. In the bad old days, in order to publish a font, you had to actually get a foundry to sell it, and so there were only a few fonts, but they were (mostly) good and the designers got to choose good names.
Now that everyone and their grandma is releasing some font (even if it's a low quality handwriting font), all the good names are taken!
Of course, it is possible in some cases to use a name which has been used before, if you check it out with the correct authorities. For instance, with GFS Heraklit, we were worried that we might be prohibited from using this name by trademark law, but after some research and inquiries we got the OK. (Note that this was made much easier by the fact that the original Heraklit is no longer being marketed.)
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