I see obvious spikes in the popularity of "Shirley" during Shirley Temple's heyday, and "Rachel" during the most popular years of the sitcom "Friends"...
It would be interesting to track down the reasons for the sudden rise and/or fall of other names.
As a previous poster said, Aidan was a character on Sex in the City. I don't watch it and don't like it, but I did like the name for a boy when I was expecting this past summer. Emma is Rachel and Ross' baby on friends. I do like that name. It was struck down by the male half. : )
I try to go with names that aren't too popular but aren't too weird either. It is harder to do with boys. We named our nine year old Nicolas because it was the only boy's name that my ex-husband and I could agree on. Turns out that it had a sudden surge in popularity and there were Nicholases everywhere in his age group. My daughter, who is six, has about 3 in her class.