Do people still do this? Making up a different name to use at gay bars? People did it a lot when I was young. It was sometimes very confusing when you got to know someone from the bar socially, and then they’d tell you what their “real‘ name was, and you weren’t sure what to call them. I have a friend that I’ve known since I was 20 who I still call by his bar name, because that’s how I think of him: his legal name doesn’t fit him, in my mind.