Bob Marley came from a comparatively prosperous background compared to many of the ghettoized Jamaicans who were his most loyal listeners throughout his career. However, the circumstances of his birth were unorthodox.
According to "Bob Marley: The Biography" by Stephen Davis, which features direct quotes from Marley's family, the future star was born to Norval Sinclair Marley, also known as Captain Marley, a white British military man who at the age of 60 met 18-year-old Jamaican woman Cedella Malcolm. The two married, and the future Bob Marley was born at the farm of his maternal grandfather.
Norval was not present for the birth, nor throughout the majority of Marley's upbringing, though he did provide financial support to his young wife and child. On his first visit to the island to see his newborn son, Norval insisted on the name Nesta Robert Marley and was specific in terms of spelling. He left soon after. But Cedella, at the point of registering her son at the Jamaican passport office, was informed by an officer that the name Nesta sounded like the name of a baby girl. Worried that the name might affect him when traveling, she simply switched the order, so that her son became Robert Nesta Marley.
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