Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods is born

Woods was born in Cypress, California to Earl (1932-2006) and Kultida (Tida) Woods (1944). He is the only child of their marriage but has two half-brothers, Earl Jr. (born 1955) and Kevin (born 1957), and one half-sister, Royce (born 1958) from the 18-year marriage of Earl Woods and his first wife, Barbara Woods Gray. Earl, a retired United States Army lieutenant colonel and Vietnam War veteran, was of mixed African American (50 percent), Chinese (25 percent) and Native American (25 percent) ancestry. Kultida (née Punsawad), originally from Thailand, is of mixed Thai (50 percent), Chinese (25 percent), and Dutch (25 percent) ancestry. This makes Woods himself one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch. He refers to his ethnic make-up as “Cablinasian” (a syllabic abbreviation he coined from Caucasian, Black, (American) Indian, and Asian).

At birth, Woods was given "Eldrick" and "Tont" as first and middle names. His middle name, Tont, is a traditional Thai name. He got his nickname from a Vietnamese soldier friend of his father, Vuong Dang Phong, to whom his father had also given the "Tiger" nickname. He became generally known by that name and by the time he had achieved national prominence in junior and amateur golf, he was simply known as "Tiger" Woods. He grew up in Orange County, California and graduated from Western High School in Anaheim in 1994.