Merman was born in her maternal grandmother's house located at 359 4th Avenue in Astoria, Queens in New York City in 1908, though she later emphatically insisted that it was actually 1912. Her father, Edward Zimmermann (1879–1977), was an accountant with James H. Dunham & Company, a Manhattan wholesale dry-goods company, and her mother, Agnes (Gardner) Zimmermann (1883–1974), was a teacher. Edward Zimmermann had been raised in the Dutch Reformed Church and his wife was Presbyterian. Shortly after they married, they joined the Episcopal congregation at Church of the Redeemer, where their daughter was baptized. Her parents were strict about church attendance, and she spent every Sunday there, at morning services, followed by Sunday school, an afternoon prayer meeting, and an evening study group for children. Her family was of German and Scottish ancestry.