Ken Jennings's Real Name: Ken Jennings

Quick answer: The quiz champion is documented as Ken Jennings. His official biography and Encyclopedia.com both use that name and date his birth to 1974 just outside, or near, Seattle, Washington. Fuller given names sometimes listed in databases are not used in these sources and are not repeated in the title (Ken Jennings; Encyclopedia.com).

Real name and early life

He is known professionally as Ken Jennings. His official site says he was born in 1974 just outside Seattle and grew up overseas, spending fifteen years in Korea and Singapore, where his father worked as an attorney, and watching Jeopardy! on the Armed Forces Network. Encyclopedia.com likewise says he was born near Seattle in 1974 and grew up primarily in Korea and Singapore. He returned to the United States for college, attending the University of Washington and then Brigham Young University. The official site says he transferred to BYU in 1996 after a two-year Mormon mission in Madrid and double-majored in English and computer science, graduating in 2000. Encyclopedia.com independently records a year at the University of Washington, a two-year mission in Madrid, and B.A. and B.S. degrees from BYU in 2000.

Career highlights

The official site says that while at BYU he captained the quiz-bowl team and began writing questions for National Academic Quiz Tournaments, later working as a software engineer in Salt Lake City. In 2004 he became a Jeopardy! contestant. His official biography says the run lasted about six months, that he won 74 games and $2.52 million, and that the streak ended on the November 30 broadcast. Encyclopedia.com instead describes seventy-five consecutive weeks as champion, a wording that does not match the official game count and is noted here rather than silently reconciled. Encyclopedia.com also records his 2006 book Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs. His official site lists later books including Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac, Maphead, and Because I Said So!, a children's Junior Genius Guides series, the podcast Omnibus, a 2011 Jeopardy! exhibition loss to IBM's Watson, a 2020 prime-time "Greatest of All Time" win against James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter, a 2020 stint filling in as host after Alex Trebek, and his 2022 appointment as one of Trebek's successors on the show.

Name notes for searchers

Ken Jennings is the documented public name in both sources used here. Searchers looking for the 2004 Jeopardy! streak or for the author of Brainiac are usually aiming at the same person.