Is Brian Eno royalty?

Eno’s full name has deceived some people into thinking there’s noble blood in the family: the superstar producer was christened Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno. But he’s a commoner with a British father and a Belgian mother. When his father, William Eno, was serving in the British army during World War II, he stayed in a Belgian household and fell in love with a photo of the family’s daughter, who was building airplanes in a Nazi forced-labor camp. At war’s end, she returned weighing only 70 pounds, but alive, and William successfully wooed her. Back in England, Eno’s father worked as a mailman–as did his uncle, grandfather, and great-grandfather. As Eno has drily noted, he comes from “a long line of people in the communications field.”

(Excerpted from the 2006 book Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed, published by Three Rivers Press, written by Gavin Edwards.)