Cher has shared how she discovered the name on her birth certificate was wrong.
The pop icon has revealed that she found out the name she thought her mother named her as a baby was not the one that actually appears on her birth certificate.
"I believed Cherilyn was my name," the Believe singer wrote in her autobiography, Cher: The Memoir, Part One.
She goes on to explain that when her mother, Georgia Holt, gave birth to her in 1946, a nurse visited her room and asked what she planned to name her baby.
"My mother replied, 'Well, Lana Turner's my favourite actress and her little girl's called Cheryl. My mother's name is Lynda, so how about Cherilyn?'"
When the Grammy winner decided to change her legal name to Cher in the late 1970s, she dug out her birth certificate.
"I was shocked to discover that I was officially registered as Cheryl," Cher wrote in her memoir, "and asked my mother, 'Do you even know my real name, Mom?'"
Her mum, who gave birth to her at age 19, responded, "Let me look at that!" before adding, "I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain. Give me a break."
