The author misses one useful strategy (or maybe it's just a sub-strategy of #3): Pick a name that is a former fad name. I was named after two uncles (same name, one on each side!) and my name is wildly common in men 30-60 years older than me and unusual in my age group. This is ideal: everyone knows how to spell it, and nobody thinks it's a weird name, so I have most of the advantages of an unusual name without the disadvantages. :)
My wife (25) has the name Lisa, which is the mother of all fad names: Not even in the top 500 U.S. female names today, but it was #1 for eight years straight during the 1960s.
She doesn't really love the fact that "Lisa" almost always refers to a 45-60 year old woman.
Not exactly fad names, but my name is Harry and my wife's name is Alice. We're both ~40 but have names that were more common for people born several decades before us. It's kinda fun.
Side note: In Sweden, Harry has once again become a quite popular name for children. My two-year old is named Harry and out of 15 kids at Kindergarten, there are two Harry :)
