Dido was born Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong, at St. Mary Abbot's Hospital in Kensington, on Christmas Day in 1971. Because she was born on Christmas Day, she also celebrates an "official birthday" on 25 June, following the example of Paddington Bear. Her mother, Clare (née Collins), is a poet of French ancestry, and her father, William O'Malley Armstrong (1938–2006), was an Irish publisher and former managing director of Sidgwick & Jackson. Her elder brother, Rowland Constantine O'Malley Armstrong, is better known as record producer Rollo, part of the British electronica trio Faithless.