Moby Is Not Actually Related To Herman Melville, Investigative Podcast Claims

Travis Schneider

Moby Is Not Actually Related To Herman Melville, Investigative Podcast Claims

Travis Schneider

For years, Moby has said that he was a distant relation of Herman Melville, and that his nickname was given to him by his parents at a young age in reference to his purported great-great-great-uncle. But an investigative podcast called The Genealogy Detective claims to have found no connection between Moby (real name Richard Melville Hall) and Herman Melville, Moby-Dick author.

In a new three-part series, Genealogy Detective hosts Mary Duffy and Adam Mellion dug into the claim, tracking down both Moby’s relatives and Melville’s and looking into their family trees. Though they found no definitive link to the famous author, they did find an apparent genealogical connection to inventor David Melville, who filed a patent for the first gas lighting system in America. So there’s that!

The three podcast episodes are below.

In other Moby news, he released a new song today, “Should Sleep,” a collaboration with J.P. Bimeni.

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UPDATE (12/14): We reached out to Moby, and he responded: “Ha, no idea if it’s true or not, but it’s flattering that people I’ve never met would spend time looking into my genealogy.”

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