Cher is perhaps one of the most iconic names in the entertainment industry. She is one of the handful of people who has such a unique name, with just one syllable putting the singer and actress in your mind!
However, the singer’s actual name is not Cher but something else. For years, she thought her legal name at birth had been something else until she found out much later that it had been something completely different.
Keep reading to learn more about what Cher found out that changed everything for her.
In her memoir “Cher: The Memoir, Part One,” Cher revealed something that not many, including her, knew for a while. That what she thought was legally her name at birth, ‘Cherilyn,’ was actually nowhere to be found on her birth records.
The 78-year-old music legend found this out much later in life. She shared in her memoir, “I was shocked to discover that I was officially registered as Cheryl.”
And how did the singer make this discovery? In the late 1970s, in a bid to officially change her name to ‘Cher’ she acquired her birth certificate. When she saw that she had been registered as Cheryl, she turned to her mother, Georgia Holt, for answers. At the time of her birth, her mother had been 19 years old. She told the singer, “Let me look at that!”
When the mother-daughter duo discovered the discrepancy, her mother simply said, “I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain. Give me a break.” This happened in 1946. Her mother had just given birth, and when the nurse asked for the name, she realized she had never decided on one. So she drew inspiration from Lana Turner’s daughter, who was named Cheryl, and suggested the name ‘Cherilyn.’ But it seems the name was never recorded correctly on the birth certificate.
In 1979, Cher explained why she wanted to officially name herself just as ‘Cher,’ saying that having a single name helped her continue branding herself in the same way and control her public image despite her marriages. She dropped her surnames – Sarkisian, LaPiere, Bono, and Allman – to continue her career as the monosyllabic icon, Cher.
Cher started working on her memoir in 2017 but began to struggle to be honest in it. She shared with Vogue, “Truthfully, I started work on it at least two times, maybe even three. But I always thought, ‘You know what? If you’re going to write this book, you’ve got to tell more.’”
But apart from the emotional burden of writing the memoir, she also struggled with the writing progress as Cher has dyslexia. “It was really, really difficult,” she said in another interview. Writing the memoir stirred up all sorts of emotions; both from the happy times and the painful ones. She approached the project with pragmatism. While writing about her career from the early days was not as hard, it still had its fair share of challenges.
“It was what it was,” she said. She shared how her long hours of work during that time really took a toll on her mental health. She shared that she had high standards for herself and saw three major edits and rewrites for the project with different ghostwriters as a result. “When I read it the first time, it wasn’t about stories, it was about information,” she shared.
She felt the writing was perhaps almost clinical and did not invite the reader to connect with the story like it should in her opinion. She shared, “Stories take you someplace.”
The first part of the memoir shares moments from Cher’s early life, the struggles of her childhood and the ascent to fame. It gives readers a look at the relentless pace of the early days of her career, and how her work schedule often left her with no time on her own.
Cher also used the help fo her family to piece together her childhood. Her mother provided some insights but it was her grandmother who produced a lot of stories which added a lot more depth.
Cher remembered her grandmother visiting her one night, bringing with her the high chair she had during her childhood, which had on it an illustration of Bambi. She did this so the two of them could look back at their memories.
The stories her grandmother told her during that particular visit gave Cher the chance to safeguard her childhood memories for her memoir. “I just thought, Oh, my God. I thought, Whatever I feel, I have an audience out there waiting, and I just don’t have time to feel this now. I’ll feel it later,” Cher shared.
With the amount of things Cher has done in her life, it is not surprising her memoir had to be divided into two parts. The first part of the memoir released this month, with the second part due to arrive in 2025!
Cher has always been such an inspiring artist for other women. Share this with other Cher fans so they can also know more about their favorite singer and actress!