RTD used to say that the reason he used the same names throughout a lot of his shows (Smith, Tyler, Jones, etc) was so that he could get a grasp on the character while he was writing them because it made more sense to him that way. Perhaps the same could be said of this era with Moff??
This is a good train of thought, and I think perhaps the most likely. If you want a futuristic setting then it makes sense to go with what you know, especially if you want to avoid conflicts with canon and stuff like that.
