Caitlyn Jenner's Real Name: Caitlyn Jenner

Quick answer: Her name is Caitlyn Jenner. She was born William Bruce Jenner on October 28, 1949, in Mount Kisco, New York. She won Olympic decathlon gold in 1976 and was publicly known as Bruce Jenner until 2015. That year she came out as a transgender woman and asked to be called Caitlyn (Library of Congress; Britannica).

Real name and early life

The Library of Congress name authority now files her as "Jenner, Caitlyn, 1949-." It keeps "Jenner, Bruce" and "Jenner, William Bruce" as variants for older books and records. One LOC citation gives "William Bruce Jenner (born October 28, 1949)" and a Mount Kisco, New York, birthplace. Britannica says that in April 2015 Jenner said she identified as a woman, and two months later she revealed that she wanted to be called Caitlyn Jenner. This page uses Caitlyn and she/her throughout, matching Britannica.

Britannica says Jenner lettered in football, basketball, and athletics at Newtown High School in Connecticut. She was also an East Coast waterskiing champion in 1966, 1969, and 1971. She entered Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa, in 1969 on a football scholarship. A knee injury limited her to basketball and track. She first competed in the decathlon in 1971 and finished 10th at the 1972 Munich Olympics. She then moved to California to train with individual-event specialists.

Career highlights

At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Jenner won decathlon gold with a then-record score of 8,618 points. Afterward she worked as a network TV sports commentator, made commercials, lectured, and published books.

Jenner married Kris Kardashian in 1991. She became a central figure in the reality series Keeping Up with the Kardashians (2007–21), and the couple divorced in 2014. LOC records her April 24, 2015, interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, in which she said, "For all intents and purposes, I am a woman." Her reality series I Am Cait, which documented her transition, debuted in July 2015 and ran for two seasons. Britannica says she became by far the most prominent athlete to come out as transgender. It also notes that her advocacy was both widely praised and heavily scrutinized.

Her memoir, The Secrets of My Life, was published in 2017. In 2021 she ran as a Republican in California's gubernatorial recall election. Her campaign struggled, at one point pausing while she appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in Australia, and she finished poorly.

Name notes for searchers

William Bruce Jenner is her birth name, and Bruce is the name she used during her athletic career. Caitlyn Jenner is her current name. Older Olympic records, books, and broadcasts list her as Bruce Jenner, and LOC keeps those forms as cross-references.