yeah, i read something like that in the legal tomes i was trawling. im not sure exactly what the age is that you can do it, but the way to change your name as an adult is to make yourself commonly known and recognised by that name. I was thinking how the hell do you do that? just ask everyone to call you something different from now on??
Apparently, yes, thats exactly what you do.
So what about people with nicknames more common than their actual names? Should they legally be "fred" or "****" or whatever? It was really confusing.