Gaga and Stefani are my nicknames. I guess when people meet me for the first time and call me Stefani, it bothers me. Because it's something that's reserved for only the people who are closest to me. It's not because I don't like my given name; it's that I became somebody else. I became somebody else for a reason, you know. This is part of what my message is - you can become whoever you want to be, to escape your past.

Lady Gaga

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

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I was performing in New York and my friends started to call me Gaga. They said I was very theatrical... So they said, you're Gaga.

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In my show I announce, 'People say Lady Gaga is a lie, and they are right. I am a lie. And every day I kill to make it true.

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When you're around me and really see that all I do is live and breathe for my work, it's not strange, it's just Gaga.

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Pirate was going to be my middle name, but then my uncle had a problem with it because pirates are bad.

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

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Bill GatesBusinessman