Cher was “shocked” to find out her real name.
The 78-year-old singer was raised as Cherilyn Sarkisian, but in 1979, she applied for a copy of her birth certificate so she could officially change her moniker to reflect the one she used as a performer – and discovered she had actually been registered as Cheryl. In an extract from her book Cher: The Memoir, Part One seen by People magazine, she wrote: “I believed Cherilyn was my name until the day years later when I decided to legally change my name to simply Cher.”
Cher’s mom, Georgia Holt endured a long labour without pain relief when she gave birth a month early and was “exhausted” afterwards. While Georgia was recovering, a nurse visited her room and asked the 19-year-old new mom what she planned to name her baby.
Cher wrote: “My mother had no idea, but the woman insisted so she replied, ‘Well, Lana Turner’s my favorite actress and her little girl’s called Cheryl. My mother’s name is Lynda, so how about Cherilyn?'” After seeing her birth certificate for the first time, the ‘Believe’ hitmaker asked her mother: “Do you even know my real name, Mom?”
She told how her mom – who passed away in December 2022 aged 96 – snatched the document, looked at it and simply shrugged as she told her famous daughter: “I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain. Give me a break.” The Strong Enough hitmaker previously praised her mother for doing such a “good job” with their Christmas celebrations.
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Cher told OK! magazine: “We were really poor. But my mom always managed to do a good job. She saved her money and mostly that went into Christmas time for my sister and myself. You don’t have to have a lot of money to have a fun time at Christmas.” And the Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again actress admitted she had always been a “wild child” looking for adventures, recalling how she persuaded a friend to run away from home with her when they were just nine years old.
She said: “When I was nine years old, I decided was going to run away from school. I talked my friend into going on a journey, like going on an adventure, and we hopped on a freight train. I had no idea where was going. l’d thrown my lunchbox away, which my mom was more angry about than anything else, and then we just rode this train until my friend started crying because it got dark.
“So I called my mom and she was like, ‘Cher! What? You’re where? What have you done? Oh my God. I wasn’t running away, I was going to come home but just wanted to have the adventure. I was a wild child.”
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