Bruno Mars’ Ethnicity and Family Roots
Bruno Mars is an American singer and songwriter known for Just the Way You Are, Uptown Funk and his duo Silk Sonic with Anderson .Paak.
Father’s side
Mother’s side
Puerto Rican (father’s side)Ashkenazi Jewish (father’s side)Filipino (mother’s side)Spanish (mother’s side)- Nationality
- American
- Born
- October 8, 1985, Honolulu, Hawaii
- Birth name
- Peter Gene Hernandez
Where Bruno Mars’ roots are on the map
What is Bruno Mars’ ethnicity?
Bruno Mars is Puerto Rican, Jewish and Filipino. His father, Pete Hernandez, has Puerto Rican and Jewish roots. His mother, Bernadette Hernandez, was born in the Philippines and moved to Hawaii.[1][2] The genealogist Megan Smolenyak traced his family through records and found that one quarter of his ancestry is Jewish, from Hungary and Ukraine, and that one of his great-great-grandfathers on the Filipino side was born in Spain.[3]
He was born Peter Gene Hernandez in Honolulu in 1985, one of six children, and grew up in several neighborhoods on Oahu. At 17 he moved to Los Angeles to pursue music.[4]
Where are Bruno Mars’ parents from?
Father’s side
Grandfather
Grandmother
Father
Pete Hernandez
Puerto RicanAshkenazi Jewish
Mother’s side
Grandfather
Grandmother
Mother
Bernadette Hernandez
FilipinoSpanish
Bruno Mars
Father’s side
Pete Hernandez comes from Brooklyn, New York, and is a musician known as Dr. Doo-Wop.[1][4] According to Smolenyak, his family tree combines Puerto Rico with Jewish lines from Eastern Europe. One of these ancestors, a former Hebrew teacher from Ukraine, came to America through the port of Galveston in Texas. The woman he later married came from a family that had entered through Ellis Island.[3]
Bruno grew up on stage with his father. From the age of two he performed as “Little Elvis” in a long-running show in Waikiki, alongside the family band.[4]
Mother’s side
Bernadette Hernandez was born in the Philippines and immigrated to Hawaii, where she worked as a hula dancer and singer.[2] She encouraged her children’s musical ambitions from an early age. Four of Bruno’s sisters later formed their own vocal group, the Lylas.[2] She died in Honolulu in June 2013 of a brain aneurysm, at the age of 55.[2]
Smolenyak found an old photo of a pair of Bruno’s great-great-grandparents on this side, taken around the 1890s. The husband was born in Spain, in the province of Segovia, and the wife in the Philippines. After her husband’s death, the great-great-grandmother married a man from China.[3]
In his own words
“It’s my dad and his Brooklyn hustler mentality.”
“Everyone’s kind of mixed up there, kind of brown because it’s sunny. So it was a shock for me when I came out here.”
“They were talking about ‘What radio station would play this?’ And it basically boils down to ‘Who’s gonna buy your albums? Black people or white people?’”
Sources
- Rolling Stone: Bruno Mars, The Golden Child (May 10, 2013)
- Rolling Stone: Bruno Mars’ Mother Dies of Brain Aneurysm (June 2, 2013)
- Megan Smolenyak, genealogist: The Multicultural Family Tree of Bruno Mars (January 16, 2026)
- MidWeek, Honolulu: Starring Bruno Mars (April 14, 2010)
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