Bonnie Tyler picked her name from a newspaper after her record company asked her to change it
The 73-year-old pop veteran was born Gaynor Hopkins, but she "never really liked the name" so she started calling herself Sherene Davies when she first started out in the music industry
6 February 2025
During an appearance on BBC Radio Wales, she said of her first stage name: "[I] never really liked the name [Gaynor Hopkins] ...
"When I was in my band Bobby Wayne and the Dixies, I was called Sherene - that was my sister's first little girls name, and I loved that name."
However, she was asked to come up with something else after she signed a record deal with RCA Records because label ex ecutives worried Sherene "sounded like a belly dancer" - so the singer picked up a newspaper and started hunting for a new name.
Bonnie explained: "I got a broadsheet newspaper and I made an effort to write all the first names I came across on one list and all the surnames on another and I went through them both and came up with Bonnie Tyler. And it's been a brilliant name."
Bonnie is still touring more than 40 years after scoring the biggest hit of her career with 1983 single 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' and during the interview, the singer admitted she's enjoying life in the music industry much more these days.
She said: "I'm enjoying it more these days than at the height of the success of 'Total Eclipse', because you're so busy winging it from one place to another, doing interviews every five minutes, you're on planes, and going to different studios and no time to really enjoy it as much as I do now."
Bonnie went on to talk about her latest single 'Yes I Can' which features lyrics about finding inner strength and self-confidence.
She said: "I love the meaning of it, it's inspiring.
"My mother brought me up to believe in myself. I was a very shy little girl growing up in school, wouldn't say 'boobah' to a goose, and I was very, very shy. But I've overcome that, because I love singing."
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