Sellapan Ramanathan, of Tamil Indian descent, was born in Singapore on 3 July 1924. He spent his childhood with his parents, V. Sellapan Mudaliar and Abirami, and two older brothers in Muar, Johor, in a house overlooking the sea. Nathan would eventually be one of seven siblings; his three older brothers died in childhood. His father had been posted to the Malayan town as a lawyer's clerk for a firm that serviced rubber plantations, but the Great Depression and rubber slump of the 1930s sent the family's fortunes crashing. Nathan's father accrued debts and eventually committed suicide when Nathan was eight.