Everyone has their own ideas on how popular(or unpopular) a name has to be they decide to use it.For me in general its under 100,unless its a name I really love.But what about you? I look forward to hearing your opinions!
I prefer to stay in the 300’s or more but I’d say top 100 top 50 is my limit otherwise I’m constantly meeting kids with the name
I’d like to say out of the top 1000, and tbh, quite a lot of my favourites are. But names given to less than 1000 people is my absolute limit (except for [name_f]Matilda[/name_f]), which is about top 70 in [name_f]England[/name_f]/ [name_m]Wales[/name_m]. So I’d say outside the top 100 or maybe 200. But that’s only for firsts. I’d happily use a name in the top 10, for a middle, if I liked it enough, or it sounded good.
We don’t really look at the stats but we tend to just prefer more unique names. Not necessarily because they are uncommon but I guess we just gravitate towards them. However, I couldn’t imagine myself using a name that is maybe within the top 50’s but then again, I’m not sure what number my sons name is but I know it’s not really uncommon nowadays.
http://www.namenerds.com/uucn/pop.html
^I like using the “playground” analysis when looking at popularity–since it groups all the various spellings of one name into a single category.
That being said, I wouldn’t use a name in the top 30 of the playground analysis (generally a name given to 10,000 or more kids in the US that year–or on average 200 or more kids per state), and I’d try my best to stay out of the top 75, if possible.
But if I really really love a name more popular than that (which happens pretty often with me), I’d definitely consider using it anyway. [name_f]My[/name_f] name was #4 in the country my birth year (according to SS–namenerds doesn’t go that far back haha) and is currently still in the top 50 according to either list, but I’ve survived and still love my name. 
Popularity doesn’t bother me as much, but if I know more than 5 people with the same name, under age 25, I generally go against it.
Well, because I don’t want my future kids to be labeled ‘[name_f]Emma[/name_f] b’ or ‘[name_m]Jason[/name_m] R’ I would try to stay top 50 and above. Though I have a few favorite names under the top 50, but a lot of them are not useable to me because of relatives, such as first cousins and such.
For me, staying outside the Top 1000 is the best way to go. At most, I would try not to go above the Top 500. Popularity bothers me for some reason…
I try to balance a name’s popularity with how much I love a particular name. If it’s a name I truly love, a list of popularity shouldn’t stop me from using it. It does disappoint me, though, when my favorites get super popular.
If I love a particular name, I try not to let it bother me. That said, if it was an [name_f]Emily[/name_f] like situation an there were going to be six in her class (it has happened in one of my sister’s classes), I would drop it, simply because it would be a pain in the butt to call their name and have a dozen girls look around, and it would be incredibly annoying for them (it was bad enough when there was one other [name_f]Sophie[/name_f] in my class when I was at school. I don’t even go by [name_f]Sophie[/name_f], but prac teachers and the like never seemed to cotton onto that fact.). People don’t seem to remember you as well either.
However, if you like at my signature, I don’t think any of them are going to reach mega popularity any time soon.