Cher 'Shocked' To Discover Her Real Name After Birth Certificate Mix-up

Famous singer Cher has opened up about a mix-up in her birth certificate that left her "shocked" to learn her real name.

She made the revelation in her new memoir, alongside revealing that she had suffered much unhappiness and suicidal thoughts in her failed marriage to Sunny Bono.

In a previous interview, Cher also discussed why the project took over half a decade to be released.

Cher's new memoir, "Cher: The Memoir, Part One," saw the septuagenarian dive into yet more details of her personal life, including how she found out that there was a mix-up with her birth certificate at the hospital where she was born.

According to the 78-year-old, she had lived with the idea that her name was "Cherilyn." However, she was "shocked" to learn that it was actually "Cheryl" when she tried legally changing it to "Cher," which she goes by on stage.

"I believed Cherilyn was my name until the day years later when I decided to legally change my name to simply Cher," the musician shared in the book, per the Daily Mail.

The realization happened when she needed to present her birth certificate officially for the name change to go through, and upon receiving it, she found the error in the name.

Unsurprisingly, when Cher made the discovery, she contacted her mother, Georgia Holt, to seek clarification about what had happened.

It was then she realized that the error occurred at the hospital after her mother had gone through a long, unmedicated labor.

"She was exhausted by the time I arrived at around 7:30 a.m. on Monday, May 20," Cher penned in her memoir about her birth in 1946.

The musician then revealed that a nurse asked her mother what name to give her, but on a whim, her mother chose one that would later lead to the misunderstanding.

"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?'"

Despite this, the singer was still registered as "Cheryl" on her birth certificate.

Cher also recalled that her mother wasn't very apologetic about the mix-up. Instead, she brushed it off with the remark, "I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain. Give me a break."

In her memoir, Cher also opened up about her troubled marriage to Sonny Bono, with whom she shares a child, Chaz Bono.

Cher revealed that during their marriage, she struggled with deep unhappiness and even had suicidal thoughts before they finally divorced in 1975.

"I stepped barefoot onto the balcony of our suite and stared down. I was dizzy with loneliness. I saw how easy it would be to step over the edge and simply disappear," Cher penned, per Today. "For a few crazy minutes, I couldn't imagine any other option."

When Cher considered how her loved ones would feel if she took her own life and the possibility that it might make others view suicide as "a viable solution," she chose to "step back inside" rather than follow through with the suicidal thoughts.

According to the "Believe" crooner, she reached this point several times, but one day, she realized she had the power to break free from her unhappiness.

"Then, one morning, everything changed," Cher added. "That night between shows, I went out on the balcony again, and this time, I thought, I don't have to jump off; I can just leave him."

In a previous interview, Cher revealed why it took her this long to debut her memoir despite beginning the project in 2017.

"It was really, really difficult, and sometimes I just wanted to jump off a bridge," Cher shared in a chat with Yahoo Entertainment.

While several factors delayed the work, Cher revealed that working through her memories also contributed to the delay.

"Some of them were easy, some of them were fun, and some of them were really, really difficult and … I'm just getting over," the 78-year-old said.

She added, "Because we were forced to do the book again and again. At the end, we were down to the wire. We were working … 11 hours" a day.