Baden-Powell was a son of The Reverend Professor Baden Powell, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University and Church of England priest, and his third wife, Henrietta Grace Smyth, eldest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth. After the Rev. Prof. Powell died in 1860 his widow, to identify her children with her late husband's fame, and to set her own children apart from their half-siblings and cousins, styled the family name "Baden-Powell". The name was eventually legally changed by Royal Licence on 30 April 1902.