I have like 3 or 4 my entire family have given me that I can think of out of the top of my head. But even then, those are nicknames my family uses for me. Everyone else non-familial just refers to me by my real name.
Really? coughweirdocough
What about a middle name? Where I come from (The famous Uranus) it is a rare thing, at least in my family. The only person I know who has a middle name is my older brother lol and he is the only one in a 100+ members of family.
Guess my mum got lazy after him… 
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Yeah, I don’t normally look at it as a “nickname” but as a shortened form of your normal name. Tom for Thomas, Jim for James etc
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I don’t know everyone’s full name, but Finnish law allows… three? names + family name, so my money’s on most people having more than one given name. (All whose full names I know have 2-3.)
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Hmmm…
but I already use a shortened name
if I shrink it further…there won’t be one at all. Hello Unknown
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gosh I have to had like five or six over the years.
Though I think if you’re gonna do a nickname option there should be a choice as to whether you have a nickname in the first place. I don’t always want to nickname my character!
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I feel like friends have weird nicknames or family just have unique nicknames. But sometimes nicknames are not needed in IF’s unless a special character is using it.
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Or make a short list of nickname to pick from?
I dunno. In some stories I think having a surname work just fine, some stories require your family name like ‘Hello Detective Williams’, vs a game where only your surname is used in most dialogues ‘Hey Alex! Pay attention!’.
So when you add a nickname, does it actually erase your surname in the game?
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Right, and then there’s the “different people using different nicknames” angle. Like, family uses one, friends you met live use another, and friends you met online use your username, even after you’ve met them live. (And then there’s the annoying one someone on upper class saddled you with when you were seven that you can’t get rid of no matter how hard you try.)
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Aw is someone picking on your Lili? Let me at them! 
I’ll give them one the whole world would embrace lol
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I don’t know what the overall trend happens to be in IF, but I’m pretty sure it’s not whatever I’ve got going on in my own writing:
Forename
Optional Nickname
Surname
Fullname (which is just a concatenation)
Undercover alias (which can optionally be the forename/nickname)
Codename in your secret organisation (which is always the same, but has its own nickname)
Superpowered name (which can be your codename, if you want to cause problems on purpose)
None of which technically overwrites anything else, though the nickname takes precedence over forename 9 out of 10 times if one exists.
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Isn’t that a bit of overkill? And what the hell is forename?
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Forename as in first name!
And yeah it’s a lot, I just figured that in a story where the protagonist is undercover, there should be an option not to brazenly use one’s real name 
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It’s not like that. The name itself is fine, the problem is what it reminds me of. And it’s just a variant of my name as well, so it’s popping up every now and again. 
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that is just evil! my brain was going ‘Forearm? no. Foreplay? no. Elbow? no?’ 
@LiliArch Good to know 
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Most I know. But most would die before saying it.
Anyway I wanna go back to mononyms.
Using homogeneity as a fasthand to check an equation’s validity is physics. This is arithmetics. :v
Re:nicknames should be optional-Couldn’t you just put your nickname as your real name and pretend the game didn’t ask for one anyways?
Also, are there any games where the name of the character should be treated with importance or am I missing out on nothing by naming all the player characters varients of Caulken Bortorture
Insert Rich Family Name has a specific line if the family surname is… Viper? Snake? something like that.
In some cultures they are present by default.
To your question, many of people I know use IRL nicknames, mostly in their subcultural groups. But yeah in IF sometimes it feel weird.
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That’s actually very common in my country. It’s usually a variation of the given name, like Dan/Danie (Daniel/Daniela), Rafa (Rafael/Rafaela), Gabs/Biel (Gabriel), Gabi (Gabriela), Marcão (Marcos), etc.
Sometimes it’s something else, but it’s more common when you’re a kid. My family used to call me Cuscuz (it’s the name of a dish). Apparently I couldn’t get enough of it as a kid and they started calling me that. It also sounds cute. But almost no one in my family calls me that anymore (although some still do).
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