Cher Reveals She Didn't Know Her Real Name Until She Was in Her Thirties
The pop legend was "shocked" when she found out the truth.
Cher might "Believe" in life after love, but it turns out one thing she couldn't wrap her head around was the fact that she didn't know her real name for decades.
In her new book, Cher: The Memoir, the pop icon revealed that she only found out what her actual name was when she filed to legally change it "to simply Cher" in 1979.
The "Strong Enough" singer, 78, explained that when she was born in 1946, her mother, Georgia Holt, decided to combine her own mom's name and a celebrity moniker. When a nurse asked Holt what she was going to call the baby, the teenage mom 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?"
Cher—who also shared a hilarious royal tidbit in her memoir—went on to think her name was Cherilyn (and why wouldn't she?) until she went about her name change. "When I applied for my birth certificate, I was shocked to find that I was officially registered as Cheryl," the singer wrote.
Cher, seen with her mother in 2010, only found out her real name at the age of 33.
Cher confronted her mother, asking, "Do you even know my real name, Mom?" but according to the "I Got You Babe" singer, Holt's reply was casual.
After "snatching the document," Cher's mom "shrugged" and said, "I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain. Give me a break."
Along with her shocking name revelation, the pop star shared plenty of other bombshells in her memoir, including the fact that she almost jumped off a balcony during her "loveless" marriage to Sonny Bono. "I was dizzy with loneliness," she wrote. "I saw how easy it would be to step over the edge and simply disappear."
When it came to her marital issues, Cher also shared that she asked Lucille Ball for advice—and the I Love Lucy star didn't hold back. "She told me, 'F*ck him, you're the one with the talent,'" the pop star wrote.
