← 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
William Shakespeare22 decades - 2
Miguel de Cervantes22 decades - 3
Babur17 decades - 4
Teresa of Ávila22 decades - 5
Guru Nanak13 decades - 6
Michel de Montaigne22 decades - 7
Christopher Marlowe22 decades - 8
François Rabelais22 decades - 9
Lope de Vega22 decades - 10
Margaret of Valois22 decades - 11
John of the Cross22 decades - 12
Bartolomé de las Casas22 decades - 13
Tulsidas11 decades - 14
John Knox22 decades - 15
Meeranot measured- - 16
Étienne de La Boétie3 decades - 17
Torquato Tasso22 decades - 18
Pierre de Ronsard21 decades - 19
Ludovico Ariosto22 decades - 20
Edmund Spenser22 decades - 21
Garcilaso de la Vega22 decades - 22
Marguerite de Navarre0 decades - 23
Luis de Góngora22 decades - 24
Hurrem Sultan0 decades - 25
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega22 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.