Before the one-name superstar, the Oscar, and the six decades of hits, there was a girl in El Centro, California named Cherilyn Sarkisian. That surname answers the question by itself. Cher is half Armenian, and she’s one of the most famous people of Armenian descent alive.
Where does Cher’s Armenian heritage come from?
From her father. John Sarkisian was an Armenian-American whose family, like thousands of others, ended up in California in the early 20th century as Armenians fled the collapsing Ottoman Empire. Cher was born on May 20, 1946, and although John was mostly absent from her childhood (her parents split when she was an infant), his name and his ancestry stayed with her.
Her mother, Georgia Holt, born Jackie Jean Crouch in Arkansas, was a singer and actress of English, Irish and German stock. So the math on Cher is straightforward: half Armenian on the paternal side, Northwestern European on the maternal side, American by birth.
What does the name Sarkisian mean?
Sarkisian (Սարգսյան) follows the most recognizable pattern in Armenian naming: a given name plus the “-ian” suffix meaning “descendant of.” Sarkis is a common Armenian first name, so Sarkisian simply means “descendant of Sarkis.” It’s the same construction as Kardashian or Tankian, and one of the most widespread surnames among Armenians. Armenia’s own recent political history features a president and a prime minister with the same name spelled Sargsyan.
We break the whole naming system down in why Armenian names end in -ian.
Has Cher engaged with Armenia?
More than most celebrities with diaspora roots. In 1993 she flew into Yerevan with the United Armenian Fund at close to the lowest point in modern Armenian history. The country was two years into independence, at war over Nagorno-Karabakh, under blockade, and living through winters with barely any electricity. Cher helped deliver aid and visited children in hospitals, later describing the trip as one of the most moving experiences of her life.
She has also lent her voice to Armenian Genocide recognition over the years, a cause that runs through nearly every prominent Armenian-American family, since so many of them descend from survivors.
Why do people not realize Cher is Armenian?
The mononym erased the surname. “Cher” carries no ethnic signal, and her public image was shaped in the 1960s alongside Sonny Bono, whose Italian name did the branding for both of them. Add a father who wasn’t around and a career that never leaned on ancestry, and the Sarkisian part faded from public memory.
It never faded for Armenians, though. Ask anyone in Yerevan or Glendale to list famous Armenians and Cher lands in the first breath, usually right next to the Kardashians and System of a Down.