In a since we are all commoner untill we recieve experince doing something or training.
This is not necessarily true.
Ultimate Campaign has rules for this though...
It's called 'backstory'.
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There have been some games that start with commoner PCs. That doesn't mean all characters start as commoners. For one, your character has had his/her exceptional stats since adulthood, and was probably in training to become a 1st level _______ (insert class here.) for awhile.
Your fighter might come from a family of potato farmers, but he was dreaming of being a great warrior and swinging a wooden sword around whenever he wasn't helping old Ma and Pa out.
In the traditional system, you're a level 1 such and such because you received training towards that goal.
Running a game where you explore the 'before we were adventurers' setup, you could start at level 0 as commoners. Then after a little bit of xp (say half that for level 1), you gain a level in one of the NPC classes. Then after awhile in there, you can finally pick your real class. You drop your levels in commoner and NPC classes, replacing them with the real class level 1.
If you want, you could toss on small thematic bonus based on the NPC class you chose, but in general there won't be surprised. Adepts go on to be spell casters, warriors become fighters, etc.
Dragon #403 had a good article about this called "A Hero's First Steps" with rules for 0 level characters.
There was also an old D&D module called "Treasure Hunt" that allowed characters to be level 0. At the end you would decide which path to take and get your first level.
The real question here is whether playing at level zero improves the story or the game for you. What will you get from delaying 1st level?
I love playing commoners :)
One of my favourite classes, along with Adepts and Experts :) :)
My favourite memory was back in early 3.5 where we played a short lvl 21 game, we had archmages, kings, and pargagons of faith in this party....and me, the 21st lvl commoner...It was pretty awesome. Since they were all so high ranked and important, everywhere they went there were political issues and grand feasts, state visits, all that kinda stuff, the people in the cities just could deal with people of that staion...that was my job, just a humble man that would go into cities and towns ahead of the group and talk with the people on a personal level. The royalty and such never even knew I was around. It was EPIC.