Why famous Royal Navy names acquire fighting reputations

Why do certain warship names seem to acquire a recurring operational character?

Successful names are repeatedly given to prominent ships that are likely to fight, creating a self-perpetuating record of deployments and battle honors.

USS Texas and Giulio Cesare offer non-Royal Navy examples of ships with reputed personalities, though the pattern appears especially strong in the Royal Navy. Successful names are repeatedly assigned to prominent, capable ships, which are then likely to be sent into combat. Dreadnought, Valiant, and Warspite accumulated long successions of ships and extensive battle honors. The reputation can therefore look like a recurring ship character even though institutional naming and deployment choices help create it.