My name is [name]Maggie[/name], which is a nickname for my middle name. Whenever I meet someone new or have a new teacher at school, I have to go into great detail explaining why I didn’t go by [name]Helen[/name] or why my name isn’t [name]Margaret[/name] [name]Helen[/name]. I prefer [name]Maggie[/name], of course, but sometimes explaining my name can get a bit annoying…
My nieces have creative nicknames too. My niece [name]Mackenzie[/name] goes by [name]Mia[/name] and her sister [name]Ariana[/name] goes by [name]Ava[/name]. It’s kinda cool though because their nicknames are their initials!
I have an uncle whose given name is [name]Junior[/name]. He goes by Dude.
I have a cousin named [name]Bonnie[/name] [name]Kay[/name], who decided when she was 15 that she hated it and wanted to be called [name]Kitty[/name]. She’s 30 now and only my Grandmother calls her [name]Bonnie[/name].
My mum’s name used to be [name]Elizabeth[/name] T”nde, but she always went by T”nde, so when she got married she changed to T”nde [name]Elizabeth[/name]. Also a girl at my school goes by [name]Tama[/name] though her name is [name]Morgan[/name].
My grandmother, named [name]Mary[/name], has gone by the name [name]Bella[/name] since her daughter [name]Mary[/name] was born. I don’t know if [name]Bella[/name] is her middle name, but that’s what I assume.
My father (only 36, mind!) is named [name]Gary[/name], but everyone seems to call him [name]Sid[/name]. I still have no clue why!
[name]Even[/name] myself, my name is [name]Nikita[/name], but people know me as [name]Jay[/name], as my middle name is [name]Jadine[/name].
I know a girl called [name]Courtney[/name] [name]Clarke[/name] who goes by Clarka…two men who go by Boomer, one’s first name is [name]Richard[/name], don’t know the other’s real name. I know a boy called [name]Hugh[/name] [name]Allison[/name] who goes by [name]Chip[/name], another called [name]Alfred[/name] [name]Clement[/name] who goes by [name]Trace[/name], my mom is [name]Mary[/name] [name]Kathleen[/name] and goes by [name]Kathy[/name], and I know a boy who goes by [name]Skeet[/name], not sure what his real name is.
My great-grandmother’s brother, [name]Dominic[/name], was known as [name]Tim[/name]. No idea how that came about, unfortunately.
I am very familiar with this…
My name is [name]Kristina[/name] [name]Kaitlin[/name], but family and close friends of the family call me, Kricket. A nickname I was given as a baby, which might as well be my name because they call me nothing else. Kricket, over the years, has had its nicknames as well: Kree, Kree Kree, and Krick.
My sister’s name is [name]Kara[/name], but my mom calls her [name]Kari[/name]? Yeah, we don’t understand it either.
My grandmother is called by her maiden name, [name]Jean[/name], because she hated her given name, [name]Exie[/name] Levine. So everybody knows her as her maiden name plus her married last name.
My aunt is named [name]Mary[/name] [name]Ann[/name] but goes by [name]Mamie[/name].
*Just went back and read the entire post and I had no idea going by your mn was considered abnormal. So knowing that, I have never been called by my first name, Kristina, besides the first day of school, doctors offices, etc. I have always been known as my mn, Kaitlin, besides with family, of course. My brother also goes by his mn. Maybe it is a southern thing 
With my kids, I plan on using a name I love and finding another name that I like that goes with it but in whatever order that sounds best while calling them the original name. For example, the name we have picked for a daughter is Brienne which will most likely be used as a mn but that is what we will call her.
I also go by my middle name…I know a girl named [name]Kristen[/name] who goes by [name]Cricket[/name]
I went to high school with a guy whose name was [name]Donnie[/name] [name]Shane[/name] (nope, not [name]Donald[/name]–[name]Donnie[/name]…yes, I live in south, why do you ask? )
Anyway, his whole family called him Johnboy and by the time he was in high school, he decided to have everyone call him [name]John[/name].
My grandpa’s given name is [name]Robert[/name] [name]Richard[/name] but he goes by [name]Mac[/name].
My uncle is [name]Calvin[/name] [name]Edgar[/name] but he goes by [name]Butch[/name].
My cousin is [name]Mark[/name] [name]Allen[/name] but he goes by Boomer.
I had an older customer by the name of [name]William[/name] who informed me one day that [name]William[/name] was neither his first or middle name. But he had no idea where [name]William[/name] came from. He didn’t learn that it wasn’t his name until he got a copy of his birth certificate as an adult. By that time both his parents and all his aunts and uncles had passed, and his older siblings said they couldn’t explain it either. They had called him [name]William[/name] since day one.
I also dated a guy whose nephews went by entirely different names. I think their names were [name]Elijah[/name] and [name]David[/name] but they went exclusively by [name]Jake[/name] and Hawken. Their father claimed it was a western tradition to give your kids one name and then call them by something else. It always seemed pretentious and unnecessary to me.
Also, I had a neighbor named [name]Jean[/name] who went by [name]Beatrice[/name]. It was a name she always loved and when she was getting married and starting a new job, she thought it as good a time as any to start telling people that was her name.
I have a friend who goes by [name]Veronica[/name] but her first name is actually [name]Xiomara[/name]. Sadly, when she was little her first grade or kindergarten teacher couldn’t pronounce [name]Xiomara[/name], so she dubbed her [name]Veronica[/name] (her middle name) and that was that. She tried very briefly to go by Xio when she got to college (where I met her), but it didn’t work very well. Her family calls her Xio though.
Most people I know who go by other names (not counting middles, which as a pp said, is pretty common among people I’ve met) have really preppy names, or surnames, so I’m not sure that counts. The only other one I can think of off the top of my head is my step-great-grandmother, whose name was [name]Martha[/name] [name]Irene[/name] but she went by [name]Ida[/name]
There was a girl in my seventh grade class who was called [name]Cassandra[/name], [name]Casey[/name] for short. Halfway through the year, she changed her name to “Amaranth.” That took some getting used to.
When I was in sixth grade, there were three other girls named [name]Megan[/name], so my teacher called us “[name]Meg[/name], [name]Fred[/name], [name]Bob[/name], and [name]George[/name],” to keep us straight. I was ‘[name]George[/name],’ but I started spelling it ‘Giorge’ because I thought that was more glamorous and feminine. I stayed ‘Giorge’ for a little over a year, but somehow, I became ‘[name]Fred[/name]’ in both high school and college. I also had a professor who called me “The Impaler” all semester long based on a joke I made on the first day. He refused to call me anything else, and I had to sign it on all of my papers and exams.
I also know a guy who goes by the name ‘[name]Marshall[/name].’ His name on facebook is ‘[name]David[/name] [name]Marshall[/name] Lastname,’ so I just assumed he went by his middle name, but I recently learned that his middle name is not [name]Marshall[/name]. I have no idea where the nickname came from.
I never met this one, but my BF’s great-grandma used to always go by [name]Gigi[/name], but her real name was [name]Ruth[/name]. The [name]Gigi[/name] comes from “GG” for “great-grandma”