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I don't have kids and don't plan to have kids for a while so it's not something I've thought about that seriously. However, I'd probably want to avoid the top 50, or any name that looked like it had a high likelihood of reaching the top 50 soon, for a real child, but even that's not a hard and fast thing if it was, for example, the only name my partner and I could agree on. And my state's popularity list would be more important to me than the national one.

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I think it's interesting to see different perspectives on this, mainly because my mother was named Mary in the early 60s, right after it fell from the number one spot, and she loves her name. She has never complained about it being common. She has claimed that if it wasn't her own name, she would have considered it for a daughter (and I got it as a middle name). Like no name has ever gotten as common as Mary once was, no name will ever be as common as Mary was. Some people really don't care about having a distinctive name. I think my avoidance of super popular names would end up being more for my sake, than my child's.

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http://www.behindthename.com/pnl/87410