← Fame through time1500-1599
The 16th century
Whose working lives fell in the 16th century. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 16th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor22 decades - 2
Hernán Cortés22 decades - 3
Mary, Queen of Scots22 decades - 4
Akbarnot measured- - 5
Ferdinand Magellan22 decades - 6
Anne Boleyn22 decades - 7
Mary I of England22 decades - 8
Vasco da Gama22 decades - 9
Henry VIII of England13 decades - 10
Henry IV of France10 decades - 11
Francis Drake22 decades - 12
Catherine de' Medici22 decades - 13
Francis I of France0 decades - 14
Tokugawa Ieyasu8 decades - 15
Jacques Cartier22 decades - 16
Oda Nobunaga8 decades - 17
Francisco Pizarro22 decades - 18
Selim I11 decades - 19
Catherine Howard22 decades - 20
Lucrezia Borgia22 decades - 21
Joanna of Castile3 decades - 22
Charles IX of France0 decades - 23
Anne of Cleves4 decades - 24
Elizabeth Báthory0 decades - 25
Henry III of France4 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.