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Of course people in the late 19th century named children for their own parents and grandparents just as they do today, but I don't see evidence that they were looking back hundreds of years for baby names (unlikely that a family Bible would have lasted so long, anyway!) Two sets of my great-grandparents emigrated from Germany in the 1880s. My grandmother, who was born in 1896, told me that most German immigrants were eager to shed the "old country" language and names, and fit in with English-speaking society. Her parents, Friedrich and Wilhelmina, used their own names for their children but in English versions, Fred and Minnie (my grandmother). They also had a son Charlie who was named for his grandfather, Karl.

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I'm not trying to argue with you at all. I believe that you found instances of Darlene and similar names in old records, I just think it unlikely that all of a sudden in the 1890s parents rediscovered those names and somehow altered them all to the same form, Darlene. The fact that Arlene was common for over a decade before Darlene appears in the data is telling to me, as is the existence of a number of other rhyming names like Carlene, Charlene, as well as the fact that there are no other names in the least like Darlene in the data at this time (no Darline, or Doroline, or Darlen, etc., as you would expect if parents were resurrecting the earlier names).

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I really believe it is much more likely that the ancient Darlene is unrelated to the modern Darlene.