While translating Sergey Shipov’s commentary on the recent tournament in Bilbao, Colin McGourty came up against a minor problem – how best to convey Magnus Carlsen’s Russian nickname, “Malysh”? He went with “the Kid”, but his uncertainty was picked up by a Russian reader who wrote in to explain the surprising story behind it.By Colin McGourty
Previously I hadn’t given the nickname much thought. After all, Carlsen was a boy who looked his age when he shot to fame, so why not call him “the Kid”? It seemed natural, if a little surprising that none of the other chess child prodigies had acquired it first. What made the Norwegian special? Well, apart from his phenomenal talent, it turns out that for anyone who’s had a Soviet childhood his surname is indelibly linked to an iconic cartoon character. The real-life Magnus Carlsen never had a chance!
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