In her newly released book, Cher: The Memoir, Part One, Cher shares an unexpected discovery about her name that left her astonished.
The Oscar and Grammy-winning icon recounts how, in 1979, when she went to legally change her name to “Cher,” she was “shocked” to find that her birth certificate listed her first name as Cheryl—a revelation that contradicted what she had believed her name to be her entire life.
“I believed Cherilyn was my name until the day years later when I decided to legally change my name to simply Cher,” the Moonstruck star writes in her memoir.
Cher delves into how the mix-up occurred, tracing it back to her late mother, Georgia Holt. Holt, who was just 19 years old when Cher was born in 1946, was exhausted following labor and inadvertently allowed the error to happen.
According to Cher, a nurse entered her mother’s hospital room and asked for the baby’s name. Holt, feeling overwhelmed, initially responded that she “had no idea.”
When pressed, Holt said, “Well, Lana Turner’s my favorite actress, and her little girl’s called Cheryl. My mother’s name is Lynda, so how about Cherilyn?”
Years later, upon discovering the error, Cher confronted her mother. “Do you even know my real name, Mom?” she asked.
Holt, as recounted in the memoir, responded with a mix of humor and exasperation: “I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain. Give me a break.”
In 1979, Cher legally simplified her name to the iconic mononym we know today. This decision also involved shedding her string of surnames, including her father’s last name, Sarkisian; her stepfather’s name, Hartmann LaPiere; and the last names of her ex-husbands, Sonny Bono and Gregg Allman.
Cher: The Memoir, Part One was published on November 19 and is now available for purchase.
