Sarkozy was born in Paris, and is the son of Pál István Ernő Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa (; —in some sources "Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál István Ernő"), (born 5 May 1928), a Protestant Hungarian aristocrat, and Andrée Jeanne "Dadu" Mallah (12 October 1925 – 12 December 2017), whose Greek Jewish father converted to Catholicism to marry Sarkozy's French Catholic maternal grandmother.