Will they ever purge old account names again?

Also should be noted that even if the OG name is free and you have an active name with a hashtag it won't work you would have to do 2 changes and hope the name is free by the next server refresh by changing to another name then trying yet again

This is why the gamertag system.was changed so you can have the name regardless of who owns it

You will just have to come up with a different spelling

That is correct. There is no way to request a gamertag be freed up.

There won't ever be another mass purge. In 2016, they updated their terms of service and if a person doesn't sign into their account within 5 years, the tag is freed up. If a person doesn't sign into their Microsoft account within 2 years, that account will be closed which should also close the Xbox account and free up the tag. There's ultimately no way to know how inactive an account is though since they are used on multiple services. So even if it's not in use on an Xbox, they could still be using the account elsewhere.

I have 2 old accounts that I lost and haven’t signed in nor used them in 6 or 7 years now and the tags on the accounts are still not deleted.

So even if they haven't played xbox in like 8 years, and only have like 70 gamerscore on one game, microsoft won't relinquish the tag if they still use the account for Office or Bing or something? Is there a way to put in a request with Microsoft to review it ? I bet there are so many tags wasted on accounts like that, that's very unfortunate. I feel like if they don't play xbox, the xbox tag should be freed and replaced with a default name