Everything You Need to Know About Frank Sinatra's Real Name and Middle Name

Uncover essential perspectives about Everything You Need to Know About Frank Sinatra's Real Name and Middle Name.

The boy who became the premier mid-century vocalist entered the world on December 12, 1915, in a modest cold-water flat at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. His mother, Natalina "Dolly" Garaventa, endured an agonizing labor delivering an infant who weighed a staggering 13.5 pounds. The attending physician used forceps to wrench the child into the room, tearing Sinatra’s left cheek, neck, and ear while puncturing his eardrum.

Believing the mangled infant was stillborn, the doctor laid him on the kitchen table to attend to the hemorrhaging mother. Sinatra's grandmother, Rosa Garaventa, recognized a faint spark of life, thrust the newborn under a stream of cold tap water, and slapped his back until he gasped his first breath.

When Dolly brought the infant to St. Francis Roman Catholic Church in Hoboken for baptism on April 2, 1916, she arrived with a specific moniker in mind. She wanted him named Frank after his godfather, Frank Garrick, a well-connected local newspaperman who assisted Dolly in Hudson County ward politics. She also wished to honor the child’s father, Anthony Martin Sinatra, an illiterate Sicilian immigrant and bare-knuckle prizefighter who competed as Marty O'Brien before joining the Hoboken Fire Department.

The presiding priest had other ideas. Adhering strictly to liturgical Latin and traditional saints' registers, the cleric christened the infant Francis. When recording the middle name, the priest inscribed Albert, honoring the infant's maternal uncle or confusing the request amidst the parish chaos. Dolly walked out of the church with a son legally registered in the parish ledger as Francis Albert Sinatra. The family shrugged off the priest's formal Latinization and called him Frank at home.