Peter Graves was born Peter Duesler Aurness on March 18, 1926, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Rolf Cirkler Aurness (1894–1982), a businessman, and his wife Ruth (née Duesler, died 1986), a Journalist. Graves' ancestry was Norwegian, German, and English. The family name originally was "Aursnes", but when Rolf's Norwegian father, Peter Aursnes, immigrated to New York City in 1887, he changed the spelling. Peter used the stage name "Graves", a maternal family name, to honor his mother's family, and also so as to not be confused with his older brother, James Arness, the star of the television series Gunsmoke.