Can I use a rare character like 飂 in a name?
Q1: Could I use a character like 飂 for my name?


Yes. In fact, you can freely choose any character for your name. However, for whether it is a good Chinese name, there may be many criteria. The most important criteria are supposed to be:


Elegant meaning. 飂 is a good one, meaning gone with the wind and implying a noble, unsullied, lofty, and proud character of a person. One derivation of this character is in 道德經


  澹兮其若海， 飂兮若無止， 衆人皆有以， 而我獨頑似鄙。


Well, I'm not good at writing English poem ... the translation below is just a simple explanation line by line for the piece of 道德經 above:


  Being indifferent to fame and wealth, as floating on the sea;Being gone with the wind, as never heading for an end that can be seen.Everyone is too busy, for their own living;But just stubborn as me, keeping such an attitude like this!


I guess you can feel the feeling of 飂 now :)
Good and easy pronunciation. It depends on character combinations so I can't tell whether a name containing 飂 (liù or liáo) sounds good or not. But it's really a rare character so that most people would have to look up a dictionary before calling your name; and being even worse, 飂 has two kinds of pronunciation -- people would be confused for which one is your preference. This is unlike a Japanese name. As a character would have many sounds in Japanese, they often write down the phonetic symbol, i.e. Hiragana or Katakana, for each name that is intended to be read out in documents. Thus, in conclusion, although polyphonic characters are even sometimes (in fact not often) used by native Chinese speakers for their names, I don't recommend to use them.


Other criteria, like some superstitious rules (e.g. 姓名學), won't be introduced here. If you are interested in them, you can see the link for more information.


  Q2: Would a native speaker use a rare character like 飂 as name?


Yes. But it will be probably considered as you are showing off.


  Q3: What does a native speaker think seeing a name containing such a character? Is it simply rare? Or really strange?


Whether it is strange depends on character combinations. That is to say, only when seeing a full name, one can answer such a question :)