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It's too nicknamey to use as a full name... I know it's been done, but I really don't like it used as the full name... Feels too babyish/childish on a grown-up. Thus, it doesn't sound very professional. People can always choose to go by a nn if they prefer it for everyday use, but since a parent doesn't know when a child is born what line(s) of work the child will go into in the future, it's prob'ly wisest to choose a name that is at least somewhat substantial and "grown up", whether common or not so common. Even Kate -nicknamey as it is- would be better since one's more likely to first picture a grown-up Kate than a grown up Katie... Katie automatically pulls up a little kid image... just like Susie, Bobby (on a boy... On a woman, it's different though... Seems a number of fem versions of male names or male-sounding names can have grown women get away with the y/ie endings on them... Ricki and Toni also work like that), Sammy, Joey, Chrissy, Lizzie, Candy, Tommy, Mandy, Ruthie, etc. will likely make people think of a little kid before they think of an adult. It's different if the ie/y ending name is NOT short for a bunch of other names (names like Chelsey and Verity and such)... It also means that a person bearing the nicknamey name will constantly be having to correct people who make assumptions about their name being short for something else and be asked repeatedly why her parents never gave her a "real name". Childish-sounding names don't stand so well on their own in the long run. There were a few people in uni who addressed me by the more childish version of my mn (went by my mn for a couple years), but ONLY certain people were allowed to call me that... Other people did not... 'cause I was an adult... I wouldn't have wanted to be stuck w/ the childish version of either of my names... Some other people w/ the same fn get away with going by the more childish version of it, but I just don't like that name and am glad my parents gave me the "real name" it corresponds to. Plus, when such a name is short for a "real name", there may be more choices of what to go by if the child doesn't like the original nickname. I sure wouldn't want to be just Debbie or Susie or Candy or Ruthie or Chrissy (esp. after Three's Company) or Lizzie or anything like that.

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It's also been quite over-used the past couple-decades to the point that it's gotten kinda boring... and it would be nice for the person using the name to have a "real name" to fall back on. Maybe Kathleen or Katrina or a variant of one of those (Katherine and its various spellings have been overused in recent years... same w/ Caitlin... but even then, they're better than just Katie).