Reno was a non-player character from Square Enix's (formerly Squaresoft) popular Play Station game, Final Fantasy VII. More info on FFVII, here. More info on Reno and the Turks, here.
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Good question. Forget the fact he's cute, the man is complicated and, therefore, interesting.
Reno, followed by Vincent, is, I believe, the most complex character of the series.
Cloud is Cloud, but apart from his "Boo hoo, poor little me" angst (as Aerith put it in the direct translation of the Japanese on the PAL AC), there's not a lot to him but a pair of gorgeous blue mopey eyes and a please-come-to-bed-now backside. The Cloud/Tifa vs Cloud/Aerith argument is moot (yeah, the Flower Girl's dead and hanging around the lifestream with her first, and true, love, and she ain't coming back, folks) and therefore pointless even worrying about. So, unless I was writing some prettyboy smut, apart from eye candy value (and not even a whole lot of that, really), there's really not much to him as a VP character.
Vincent is also a nice complicated character, and at least has some damned good reasons for being able to out-broody Angelus, but SE has taken his story and run with it in DC so there's not a lot else to say. Reno, on the other hand, has enough gaps to play with, unless SE does something with him in CC I'm currently unaware of (which I doubt; that's essentially Zack's story).
If you think about it, Reno has even more reason to be Broody Man than either of these two, but he isn't, hopefully for some reason other than the SE writers couldn't be bothered with him. And they've given him a happy dose of ambiguity: characteristically, sexually and historically. That's fascinating.
Frankly, IRL, if I were shopping--I'm not--I'd prefer Rude. Or, possibly--no, probably--Vinnie, but that's probably from some deep-seated silly need to rescue him from himself. Or Zack. Or... no, really. Zack. Hmmm.
However, Rude's story doesn't interest me as a writer, except as a catalyst for Reno. There's only so far you can go with "I've been hurt by a woman or two and don't trust them any more; don't say a whole lot; really, really like my weird partner; and have (or had) a crush on Tifa," before your brain starts to ooze out of your ears.
I do pop into other VPs occasionally (usually Rude's), but it's Reno's story.
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BC is set 6 years before the FF game, so he was a Turk for at least 6 years before FF. The youngest Turk's age during BC is given as 19 years old, and it wasn't Reno. Even presuming he was 20, then, the absolute youngest Reno could possibly be at the opening of FF is 26, or 28 as of AC.
Yet, he has senior rank during BC, and I am going to presume he didn't make it to where he was in 6 months (even taking into account SE's tendency to make training illogically fast for mostly teenagers or young adults in all of their FF games. That's a marketing and game strategy, not a story one).
True, Elena made senior rank in FF by 21, almost immediately upon recruitment, actually, but she was also the youngest Turk to do so, and it was an emergency (Reno was hospitalised after losing a fight with Cloud and co). Also, she could claim some special training: her older sister is Player Character Female Gun in BC (the character I've named Katelyn for this story), and according to the BC info on both of them, they both spent their entire school years training at the Shinra Military Academy. Their father was also a teacher there. Katelyn is mentioned as being a top student there and it is also stated that Elena was very competitive with her sister, so we can presume she probably hit top marks, too.
Nevertheless, Reno, Rude and Tseng had to keep correcting her unprofessional behaviour during FF--for good reason, in a couple of cases (I've always thought Elena was written as a bit of a drongo).
Therefore, I have arbitrarily (but logically) set Reno's age at the start of BC as 22; and therefore, during FF as 28 and AC as 30, as his youngest probable age.
Note: Yes, this is older by five years than I had him the last time these stories were up, but BC wasn't a factor then. While I have seen all sorts of shock at the possibility of this world-wise young-looking man being "that old", bear in mind that 30 does seem very old to a 15 year-old fangirl in lust *grin*. It did to me when I was 15. Umm. It still does, and I'm now over 30. But it really isn't.
Realistically, for them to be as experienced and trusted as they are (and even survive against the plethora of super-powered Mako carriers that are thrown at them, given that the Turks are dangerous, but not "superhuman" in the way Cloud & co are), Rude and Reno must be much older than Cloud and Tifa.
Also looking young does not = being that that age (and check out his hands in AC, if you want to be pedantic about it. They do show his age. Hands always do). I have friends in their thirties who look 10 years younger than they are. Even I get mistaken for being in my early 20s on a good day.
And AC is Japanese anime: all of them look very young except Rude, Barret and Cid. Why? Lack of facial hair and definitively effeminate features. Cloud doesn't look in his 20s imo either; facially, he looks like a teenager while walking around in a man's body (and don't even get me started on the supposedly 17/18 year-old Tidus from FFX). Vincent's static age is given as 27, and imo, he and Reno look like contemporaries (ie, Vincent looks much younger than 27, too).
Anyway, in the absence of SE coming out and being definitive, I will not claim I have Reno's exact age down, it's just the most likely I can think of, and I think I have erred on the side of a wee bit too young.
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Reno, like Rude, Elena and Tseng, was never given a surname by SE for FFVII or AC, and, so far as I know, BC, yet. It has often been wrongly assumed to be Sinclair, because a very popular fanfic gave his full name as Reno Justin Sinclair, and that's flashed across the web like it's a fact. Alternative surnames are Tarshil or Kiribani, these are also from fanfics. I could call him Reno Charlie Fanakapan and it wouldn't make it true. These are fanfics, people, not canon.
For the record, I haven't read these fics, so any similarities are purely coincidental. I just know they've existed.
So why would Cloud Strife and co have surnames while the Turks don't? It makes sense, if you think about it. The 00's of James Bond fame are numbered so they can keep undercover. The Turks, if they have friends and family, would like to keep them as safe as possible. They are natural targets of terrorist organisations, after all. Not using surnames would help. Not very effectively, given that members of Avalanche and the Corneo underworld probably know them by sight even out of uniform and have dossiers on all of them, but a bit.
It also partially de-personalises them, thereby making them a bit more "Turk" (almost like they all have the family surname Turk, if you get my meaning). Makes it easier to foster that internal loyalty "the Turks" are so renowned for... and easier to keep them under control. In that context, whatever SE's intentions were, I would say the closest to canon we can definitively get regarding Reno's surname is actually: Turk.
If SE ever release his name, then we'll know. Until then... liberties.
I do think it is unlikely that they will, though. If you have a look of the shot of the bloodied-up Staff ID cards in AC, Turk 077 is simply named "Elena". Here's my screenshot of it, if you want a look.
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