Inigo Owen Jones was born in Croydon, Surrey, England to Owen Jones a civil engineer. It has been claimed Inigo Owen Jones is descended from the architect Inigo Jones; however, the latter never married and there are no records of descendants. His mother was from the Bernoulli family of mathematicians, and Inigo attributed his interest in meteorology and astronomy to this background. Upon his death, his cousin, Archibald Bernoulli of Melbourne, a direct descendant of the Bernoulli family, placed a notice in The Argus newspaper in Melbourne.