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.

My name's not John Beatle, it's John Lennon.

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.

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.

I thought up the name Queen early on. It couldn't have been King; it doesn't have the same ring or aura as Queen.