I have a different point of view .Many Jewish women in the Pale of Settlement were never given Hebrew names , just Yiddish ones  e.g. Sheyndl , Frume, Blume , Freydl and sometimes the Yiddish ones had Loshn Koydesh roots e.g. Sore, Chane , Khaye , Rokhl.
Most people in Jewish Gen are asking about their relatives from the Pale from 1850 - 1924 when this would be true . Were there people in the Pale  who gave their children purely Hebrew derived  names before Herzl ? Of course . However , given how Jewish Americans chose  Shirley, Jennie , Fannie , Zelda , Sydney, Melvin, Irving etc.  , it is highly unlikely that it occurred to many of them to see if they could look for an American name that meant something in Hebrew. What they wanted to do was to find " Yankee" names. So, if Sore , for example was  Shirley's birth name , there was no need to find an American name that derived from Hebrew like Shir-li.   Of course that all changed with the creation of the State of Israel. Nowadays , people look for Modern Hebrew derivations  all the time . 
Again , I am not saying that any theory is definitely impossible , only that certain theories  are much more common and likely than others . 
Henry H. Carrey