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For me, it's not as if I'm intentionally going for weird names. It may be a part of my "gosh darn odd taste" (hee), but I tend to be attracted to names with certain visual and aural characteristics -- and some of those names may be unusual. For example, I usually like names with at least one "hard" sound, and I usually dislike "frilly" names. I like names ending in -ith, -eth, and -is and dislike names ending in -ella, -leigh, and -bel. I like many Welsh and Finnish names because I find the aesthetics of those languages attractive, and I also find Germanic and Scandinavian names interesting. And so on.

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I don't really consider popularity and normality when liking a name, though I may dislike a name if it suddenly becomes insanely popular as a result of hype aversion.

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If you look some of my names, you'll find both "normal" and "unusual":

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Girls: Adelle, Arsendis, Bonnie, Branwen, Christiana, Constance, Dagmar, Emilia, Ingrid, Leah, Lydia, Margery, Rosamund, Tellervo, Tirion, Winifred.
Boys: Alasdair, Anton, Bran, Daniel, Erik, Faramund, Gareth, Kenta, Llewellyn, Lysander, Owen, Rhys, Sheridan, Taliesin, Tristan, Vincent, William.

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I do skew toward the unusual, but this is more of a result of liking certain qualities in names than going for weirdness. I also tend to like a lot of older names that haven't been popular for a long time (like Margery and Rhoda).

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I also agree with Norah's statement of self-selection. A lot of the people here are name nerds so there is a higher exposure to unusual, ethnic, and yes, "weird" names as opposed to the average person on the street.

This message was edited 6/17/2011, 8:18 PM