Does your culture uses nicknames?

I realized reading this subreddit the anglo-saxon culture is huge on nicknames, parents even choose their kids nicknames before birth, people go by entirely different names, etc.

I'm french canadian and this is absolutely not a thing here, the only thing most people get sometimes called is a shorter version of their names for convenience, but even that is mostly for younger people. And people NEVER go by a different name than their real name in an official capacity, its only for very familiar use by close ones, and simply because its less long to pronounce.

So i was wondering, is the official nickname thing also a thing in other cultures/languages?