Magnus Carlsen's Real Name: Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen

Quick answer: Magnus Carlsen's documented full name is Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen. He was born on November 30, 1990, in Tønsberg, Norway. In 2013, at age 22, he became world chess champion, then the second-youngest player to hold the title (Britannica).

Real name and early life

Britannica lists him as also known as Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen and says he was born on November 30, 1990, in Tønsberg, Norway. The Library of Congress heading is "Carlsen, Magnus, 1990-." A note in that record cites a published biography giving the same November 30, 1990, birth date and identifying him as the Norwegian who won the world championship in 2013. Britannica says his father first taught him chess when he was five, and that he played in his first tournament at eight. In 2002 he finished second in the boys' under-12 division at the FIDE World Youth Chess Championship in Iráklion, Greece.

Career highlights

He became a grandmaster after finishing second at the Dubai Open Chess Championship in April 2004, Britannica says. In January 2010 FIDE announced that he was the world's top-ranked player; he had recently turned 19 and was the youngest to reach number one. That year he also modeled for the clothing company G-Star.

In 2013, at 22, he won his first world championship, becoming the second-youngest champion at that time, and he defended the title against Viswanathan Anand in Sochi, Russia, in 2014. The same year he won the World Rapid Championship in Dubai, and he won that title again in Berlin in 2015. He defended the classical title in London in 2018, tying Fabiano Caruana over 12 games before winning a rapid tiebreak. In 2019, Britannica says, he won the rapid and blitz titles in Moscow and became the first person to hold all three FIDE titles at once. He defended the classical title for a fifth time against Ian Nepomniachtchi in Dubai in 2021; the sixth game of that match, lasting 136 moves over 7 hours and 45 minutes, was the longest in world championship history. In July 2022 he announced that he would not defend the title in 2023. His official site later listed a peak FIDE rating of 2882, reached in 2019.

Name notes for searchers

Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen is the documented full name; he is universally known as Magnus Carlsen. The middle name Øen may also appear without the letter ø, as Oen, in English indexes. He should not be confused with other players named Carlsen.