‘Shocked’ Cher learns her real name on birth certificate following mix-up

Cher details her shock after discovering the name her mother gave her as a baby is not the same one listed on her birth certificate.

Cher spent years not knowing her real name.

The singer wrote in her memoir, released on November 19, how “shocked” she was when she “decided to legally change [her] name to simply Cher.”

While the Grammy winner wrote in Cher: The Memoir, Part One that she “believed Cherilyn was [her] name,” it was actually listed as “Cheryl” on her birth certificate.

Cher’s mum, Georgia Holt, asked her daughter to “give [her] a break” after the discovery.

“I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain,” the late actress said of giving birth to Cher in May 1946.

Cher with her mum, singer and actress Georgia Holt, who passed away in 2022. Picture: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

The songwriter noted, “My mother had no idea [what to name me], but the [nurse] insisted so she replied, ‘Well, Lana Turner’s my favourite actress and her little girl’s called Cheryl. My mother’s name is Lynda, so how about Cherilyn?’”

However, Cher was “officially registered as Cheryl.”

Cher details her shock discovery in her new memoir.

The performer realised this when she made her name “just Cher” in 1979 and dropped the four surnames of dad John Paul Sarkisian, stepdad Gilbert LaPiere and ex-husbands Gregg Allman and Sonny Bono.

“It’s better for me than having people wonder if they should call me Mrs. Allman or Mrs. Bono or Mrs. Bono Allman or Miss Cher or whatever,” she explained on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson at the time.

“I like it,” the Goddess of Pop continued. “I mean, Cher is just fine. Just plain Cher.”

Cher says her mother had no idea what to name her. Picture: Lifetime

Cher only discovered her real first name in 1979 when she applied to drop her surnames. Picture: Lifetime

Cher bared it all in her memoir, including dark details about her relationship with Bono and the ups and downs of her and Allman’s short-lived marriage.

She also identified Val Kilmer as the only one of her previous partners to break up with her.

Additionally, the Oscar winner penned the story of her virginity loss — which she deemed a case of “revenge sex.”

Cher wrote that after a neighbourhood boy “ditched” her post-kiss, she decided to “loan out her virginity to him.”

She explained, “When what turned out to be a massively overrated experience came to an end, I asked him, ‘Is that it? Are we finished?’ Then I told him to go home and never come back.”

This article originally appeared in Page Six and was reproduced with permission

Originally published as ‘Shocked’ Cher learns her real name on birth certificate following mix-up