Lady Gaga is my name. If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don't really know me at all.

If I'm gonna tell a real story, I'm gonna start with my name.

I sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be anything else but what I am having been named Madonna? I would either have ended up a nun or this.

It's so much easier to know who you are when there aren't a thousand people telling you who they think you are.

Africans of my generation-and even today-generally have both an English and an African name. Whites were either unable or unwilling to pronounce an African name, and considered it uncivilized to have one. That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why she bestowed this particular name upon me I have no idea. Perhaps it had something to do with the great British sea captain Lord Nelson, but that would be only a guess.

Everyone calls me Bruno; they don't ever call me Peter - that was just my government name.