Cher's Real Name: Cherilyn Sarkisian

Quick answer: Cher's birth name is Cherilyn Sarkisian. She was born on May 20, 1946, in El Centro, California, and works under Cher—a shortened professional form of Cherilyn. Music is the core career despite acting Oscars; singers is the better category than actors alone.

Real name and early life

Britannica and Library of Congress authority files identify Cher as Cherilyn Sarkisian, born May 20, 1946, in El Centro, California (Britannica; LOC). Sarkisian is the Armenian-American family surname; Cherilyn is the given name later clipped to Cher for billing. She has also been associated in records with stepfather surnames (including Bono during marriage), but Cher remained the durable stage identity. Raised in California amid financial instability, she left school early and entered the Los Angeles music scene as a teenager.

Career highlights

With Sonny Bono she scored mid-1960s hits as Sonny & Cher (“I Got You Babe”) and hosted network variety TV. Solo chart reigns spanned “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves,” “Half-Breed,” and decades later the dance smash “Believe” (1998), a pioneer of mainstream Auto-Tune. Film work includes an Academy Award for Best Actress in Moonstruck (1987) plus Silkwood and Mask, which is why some databases file her under actors—yet the enduring brand is the one-named singer. Las Vegas residencies, farewell-tour cycles, and fashion iconography kept her visible into the 2020s. Across labels and marquees, the professional name stayed Cher; the documented birth name is Cherilyn Sarkisian.

One-name marquee lettering is a branding choice that coexists with Sarkisian on birth and early career paperwork.

Concert films, greatest-hits CDs, and Moonstruck home-video editions keep both the mononym and the Sarkisian birth trail discoverable for collectors.

Name notes for searchers

Cher is a truncation of Cherilyn, not a random mononym. Married names (Bono, Allman) appear in older legal contexts but are not the birth surname. Prefer Britannica and LOC over gossip stubs. Wikipedia is useful only as a pointer after primary citations.

Fashion and farewell-tour merchandising keep the single-name brand dominant in retail search even when encyclopedia entries lead with Cherilyn Sarkisian.