← 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 - 26
Luís de Camões1 decades - 27
Nurbanu Sultan0 decades - 28
Philip Sidney22 decades - 29
Guru Arjan6 decades - 30
Antonio Pigafetta20 decades - 31
Wu Cheng'en9 decades - 32
Thomas Wyatt22 decades - 33
Louise Labé21 decades - 34
Pietro Aretino22 decades - 35
Şehzade Bayezidnot measured- - 36
Baldassare Castiglione22 decades - 37
Francesco Guicciardini22 decades - 38
Guru Ram Das4 decades - 39
Hans Sachs22 decades - 40
Götz von Berlichingen12 decades - 41
Guru Angad Dev0 decades - 42
Luis de León22 decades - 43
Fernando de Rojas21 decades - 44
Şehzade Cihangirnot measured- - 45
Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubaraknot measured- - 46
Guru Amar Das5 decades - 47
Agrippa d'Aubigné8 decades - 48
Vittoria Colonna22 decades - 49
François de Malherbe18 decades - 50
Qi Jiguang5 decades - 51
George Chapman22 decades - 52
Thomas Kyd16 decades - 53
Veronica Franco20 decades - 54
Ishikawa Goemon0 decades - 55
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford9 decades - 56
Surdas7 decades - 57
Heinrich Bullinger22 decades - 58
John Harington22 decades - 59
Matteo Bandello22 decades - 60
Edmund Campion21 decades - 61
Andrey Kurbsky0 decades - 62
Richard Hakluyt22 decades - 63
Shin Saimdang0 decades - 64
Gulbadan Begum0 decades - 65
Maximus the Greek20 decades - 66
Joseph Justus Scaliger0 decades - 67
Kılıç Ali Paşanot measured- - 68
Jan Kochanowski0 decades - 69
Abdul Rahim Khan-I-Khananot measured- - 70
Justus Lipsius22 decades - 71
Oruç Reis0 decades - 72
Hamnet Shakespeare0 decades - 73
Alonso de Ercilla22 decades - 74
John Lyly21 decades - 75
Joachim du Bellay9 decades - 76
Catherine de Bourbon22 decades - 77
Anne Askew14 decades - 78
William Camden22 decades - 79
Joseph ben Ephraim Karo4 decades - 80
Gil Vicente21 decades - 81
Paolo Giovio22 decades - 82
Giambattista della Porta0 decades - 83
George Buchanan22 decades - 84Olaus Magnus22 decades
- 85
Salima Sultan Begum0 decades - 86
José de Acosta21 decades - 87
Gian Giorgio Trissino22 decades - 88
Luís Fróis0 decades - 89
Ippolito de' Medici6 decades - 90
Roger Ascham22 decades - 91
Mary Sidney13 decades - 92
Mateo Alemán21 decades - 93
Juan de Mariana22 decades - 94
Pir Sultan Abdal0 decades - 95
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés18 decades - 96Malik Muhammad Jayasi0 decades
- 97
Tang Xianzu7 decades - 98
Primož Trubar0 decades - 99
Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme22 decades - 100
Andrea Navagero22 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.