New bombshells continue revealing themselves in Cher’s new book, “Cher The Memoir: Part One.”
One revelation was a surprise for the actor herself. Cher discovered a new side of herself when she began the process of legally changing her name from Cherilyn to Cher. However, the 78-year-old music legend reveals in her memoir that when she applied for a copy of her birth certificate in 1979, she found out her actual legal name was in fact Cheryl Sarkisian.
She explained she was “shocked” to learn this information. “I believed Cherilyn was my name until the day years later when I decided to legally change my name to simply Cher,” she wrote.
The memoir traces the first half of her life, including how she got her legal name. Cher was born in 1946 in El Centro, California to Georgia Holt, a young, struggling actress, who endured a long, unmedicated labor. “She was exhausted by the time I arrived at around 7:30 a.m. on Monday, May 20,” Cher wrote.
During the recovery period after birth, a nurse asked Holt what she planned to name her child. “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?'” Cher recounted.
When Cher learned of the error on the birth certificate, she asked her mother, “Do you even know my real name, Mom?” The singer wrote that her mother grabbed the paper from her hands and shrugged it off.
Holt told her daughter, “I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain. Give me a break.”
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