Well, Vladimir, Dave, and Angela are fairly nondistinctive names (and in fact, I have no idea who you mean by "Dave").
But in general if I were looking for why something went by a certain name, I'd expect the answer to be "that's how it was learned in the beginning". People hate changing the name they use for things, and even just words for things can persist for so long that there is no knowledge of their origin other than "it's always been that way". (Obviously, they usually don't... but they can. The english word "wheel" is a good example, with an incredibly long line of descent straight from PIE; contrast the word "cycle", which descends from the same PIE root, but has the straightforward (?) origin "borrowed from the Greek".) I'm pretty sure you're referring to the guy as "Saddam" because you've observed that that's normal practice. It might be very difficult to find an example where that wasn't the entire justification.
But in general if I were looking for why something went by a certain name, I'd expect the answer to be "that's how it was learned in the beginning". People hate changing the name they use for things, and even just words for things can persist for so long that there is no knowledge of their origin other than "it's always been that way". (Obviously, they usually don't... but they can. The english word "wheel" is a good example, with an incredibly long line of descent straight from PIE; contrast the word "cycle", which descends from the same PIE root, but has the straightforward (?) origin "borrowed from the Greek".) I'm pretty sure you're referring to the guy as "Saddam" because you've observed that that's normal practice. It might be very difficult to find an example where that wasn't the entire justification.