The standard notion of a circle is a set of all points in a plane equidistant from some fixed point in that plane (its center).
By distance we mean standard Euclidean distance. So a circle in $\mathbb{R}^2$ is a set $\{ (x,y) \in \mathbb{R}^2 \,|\ \mathrm{distance}((x,y),(a,b))=r \}$ for some fixed point $(a,b) \in \mathbb{R}^2$ (the center of the circle) and some fixed (positive) distance $r \in \mathbb{R}$, $r>0$ (the radius).
Euclidean distance is given by the formula: $\mathrm{distance}((x,y),(a,b)) = \sqrt{(x-a)^2+(y-b)^2}$. Thus squaring both sides of the equation "$\mathrm{distance}((x,y),(a,b))=r$" gives us
$$\{ (x,y) \in \mathbb{R}^2 \,|\ (x-a)^2+(y-b)^2=r^2 \}$$
This is the circle with radius $r$ and center $(a,b)$.
If we wish to discuss a circle in $\mathbb{R}^n$, then we need to specify the plane in which it lies. The circle with center ${\bf c}$ and radius $r>0$ which lies in the plane $({\bf x} - {\bf p}) {\bf \cdot} {\bf n}=0$ (the plane through the point ${\bf p}$ with normal vector ${\bf n}$) is given by $\{ {\bf x} \in \mathbb{R}^n \,|\ ({\bf x}-{\bf p}){\bf \cdot}{\bf n}=0 \mbox{ and } |{\bf x}-{\bf c}|=r \}$.
Again $|{\bf x}-{\bf c}|$ is the standard Euclidean norm.
If you mess with the definition of distance, then you can still call the corresponding set a "circle", but it's not a circle is the standard "classical" sense.