Lady Gaga

The artist known as Lady Gaga was born as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was reborn with a name adapted from a Queen song.

Music producer Rob Fusari claims to have created the "Lady Gaga" stage name because some of Stefani's vocals reminded him of Queen's Freddie mercury. The Ga Ga comes from the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga". The song became attached to her and an inadvertent text message autocorrect created a "Lady Gaga" that Stefani decided was the stage name to use.

Another version of the origin story claims that the name resulted from a marketing meeting.

Either way, the word "gaga" entered the English lexicon in the early 1900s as a term for "crazy" or "silly." Though its origin is unknown, it may come from the French imitative gaga meaning "senile" or "foolish."

Today the word is most commonly used in the sense of deep infatuation, where going gaga for something is the same thing at "mooning over" it. Considering Lady Gaga's record sales and fan base, that meaning seems pretty accurate too.