[sirn]

They're the actual nicknames. Back some thirty years ago, people were still named using Thai words like "Daeng" (Red), "Kai" (Chicken), "Noi" (Small), "Nam" (Water), while a Thai-Chinese family may have their elder member in the family name their children with a Chinese word. (e.g., mine was named by my great-grandmother, and if I were to spell my nickname properly in Chinese it would likely be "Shen", though I've never cared enough to confirm)

However, the influence of western media in recent years caused this to slowly shift into English words in the past twenty or so years. So nowadays it's not uncommon to find someone named "Night", "Nick", "Note", "Buddy", etc. There was also a brief period where people named their kids based on a Korean star they like (though not as popular as English-sounding names).

(And yes, getting referred to by first name on a website is always very weird to me :)