Rufus never tells Bill and Ted his name, they tell themselves. He just says that he is there to help them with their history report. When the Bill and Ted from the future show up, they call Rufus by his name twice, and they start calling him that from there. It's a temporal paradox, really, as Bill and Ted created the name Rufus from nothing.
This isn't a slip-up. The future Bill and Ted would have had many off-screen opportunities to hear Rufus's name. The fact that they know it shows us that they have met.