Globally recognised pop icon Cher has told how, for decades, she didn’t know her real name.
The singer was under the impression she was born Cherilyn Sarkisian until her 30s. However, in her new memoir, she has revealed a mistake on her birth certificate and that her real name is simply Cheryl. In her new book, Cher: The Memoir, Part One , the 78-year-old recalls the discovery as an unsettling shock in 1979 as she underwent the legal process to officially change her name.
“I believed Cherilyn was my name until the day years later when I decided to legally change my name to simply Cher,” she writes. The pop star traces the mishap back to her birth, telling a story from her mother, Georgia Holt. After a gruelling, unmedicated delivery, the young mother was reportedly exhausted and caught off guard when a nurse pressed her for a name.
Holt supposedly combined the name of her favourite actress, Lana Turner’s daughter, Cheryl, with her mother’s name, Lynda, to create “Cherilyn.” However, the name “Cheryl” was somehow mistakenly recorded on the birth certificate.
Cher’s mother did not share her shock. When the singer confronted her mum about the mix-up, Holt was unfazed. “I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain. Give me a break,” her mum told her.In an interview promoting her memoir, Cher spoke of her relationship with Holt, calling her mum “very, very strange”.
Cher said the relationship was shaped by both affection and unpredictability. “She was loving, but she was crazy,” Cher said in an interview with Howard Stern. However, she said that her mum and Sonny Bono, her first husband and music partner, were the first to believe she “would be something.”
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