NEWS / Singer Cher "shocked" to discover real name on birth certificate

Legendary American singer Cher has revealed that the original name on her birth certificate was Cheryl, not Cherilyn as she had previously believed. According to the pop icon’s autobiography, Cher: The Memoir, which was released on November 19, the singer was shocked to learn about the revelation and previously assumed her birth name had been Cherilyn due to an error on her birth certificate.

“I believed Cherilyn was my name,” the 78-year-old wrote, as reported by the New York Post, “until the day years later when I decided to legally change my name to simply Cher.”

Cher related a story told by her mother, Georgia Holt, according to which her mother was forced to pick a name for her daughter after giving birth to her at the age of 19 on May 20, 1946. Since Holt’s favorite actress at the time was reportedly Lana Turner and the name of Turner’s daughter was Cheryl, she putatively decided to combine the name Cheryl with that of her mother, Lynda, to produce the name Cherilyn. Holt was a singer and model herself at the time. Since Cher’s father was Armenian-American truck driver John Sarkissian, her full name was supposedly Cherilyn Sarkissian.

However, when the superstar later applied to legally change her name to Cher in the 1970s, she discovered that her mother’s story did not quite match the name she had discovered on her birth certificate—Cheryl. After the name change, Cher went briefly went by the name Cher Bono, adopting the last name of her first husband singer Sonny Bono, and later Cher Allman, with the last name of her second husband Greg Allman, vocalist and guitarist of The Allman Brothers, before dropping her last name altogether and simply using the name Cher.

Cher rose to fame singing together with Sonny Bono as part of the folk rock and pop duet Sonny and Cher in the latter half of the 1960s, producing hits such as “I Got You Babe”, “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”, and “You Better Sit Down Kids”. She later became a solo singer in her own right releasing hit pop singles such as “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves”, “Half-Breed”, and “Dark Lady” throughout the 1970s. She released the disco album Take Me Home (featuring the eponymous comeback hit) in 1979.

During the 1980s, Cher became a famous movie star, appearing in Silkwood (1983), Mask (1985), Suspect (1987), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Moonstruck (1987), and Mermaids (1990). Her music career experienced a revival with the release of the rock-influenced albums Cher (1987), Heart of Stone (1989), and Love Hurts (1991), yielding hit singles “I Found Someone”, “If I Could Turn Back Time”, and “Save Up All Your Tears”. Cher’s 1998 hit “Believe” (featured on her album of the same name) pioneered the use of auto-tune to distort vocals and became a number-one electronic dance pop hit throughout the world. Cher was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024.