 His mother was a boyaress, and, as art collector and memoirist Krikor Zambaccian recounted, may have been a descendant of the Balotescu boyar clan.Bogdan-Pitești also had a sister, Elena Constanța Bogdan; both she and her mother reportedly survived his death.As one of his eccentricities, Bogdan-Pitești encouraged the—unsustainable—rumor that he was a direct descendant of an ancient Wallachian ruling house, the Basarab Princes.