← Fame through time1980-1989
The 1980s
Whose names filled the books of the 1980s - anyone at all, however long dead - counted as mentions per million words printed, so a period that simply published more does not inflate anyone.
Talked about then
Whose names appeared most in French books during the 1980s, whenever they lived.
- 1
Voltaire22 - 2
Stendhal14 - 3
Louis XIV of France11 - 4
François Mitterrand8.6 - 5
Molière8.3 - 6
Victor Hugo6.7 - 7
Montesquieu6.6 - 8
Louis XVI of France6.5 - 9
Louis XV of France4.9 - 10
Jacques Chirac4.0 - 11
Joan of Arc3.4 - 12
George Sand2.9 - 13
François Fénelon2.9 - 14
Le Corbusier2.8 - 15
Georges Pompidou2.7 - 16
Napoleon III2.7 - 17
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing2.6 - 18
André Gide2.5 - 19
Léon Blum2.4 - 20
Pierre de Marivaux2.4 - 21
Benjamin Constant2.1 - 22
Jules Verne2.1 - 23
André Breton2.0 - 24
Paul Valéry2.0 - 25
Marcel Proust2.0 - 26
Louis XVIII of France1.9 - 27
Pierre Mauroy1.8 - 28
Marie Antoinette1.7 - 29
Roland Barthes1.7 - 30
Anatole France1.6 - 31
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor1.6 - 32
André Malraux1.6 - 33
Charles de Gaulle1.6 - 34
Jean-Jacques Rousseau1.5 - 35
Paul Claudel1.5 - 36
Simone de Beauvoir1.5 - 37
François Mauriac1.4 - 38
Jean Cocteau1.4 - 39
Saint-John Perse1.4 - 40
Raymond Aron1.4 - 41
Jules Ferry1.4 - 42
Théophile Gautier1.4 - 43
Romain Rolland1.4 - 44
Charles X of France1.4 - 45
Laurent Fabius1.3 - 46
Max Jacob1.3 - 47
Michel Foucault1.2 - 48
Chrétien de Troyes1.2 - 49
Claude Bernard1.2 - 50
Jacques Delors1.1 - 51
Francis de Sales1.1 - 52
Auguste Comte1.1 - 53
Louis XII of France1.1 - 54
Marguerite Duras1.0 - 55
Robert Schuman1.0 - 56
Albert Camus1.0 - 57
Jean Monnet0.98 - 58
Marguerite Yourcenar0.95 - 59
Roger Martin du Gard0.95 - 60
Vincent de Paul0.94 - 61
Jean-Paul Sartre0.92 - 62
Jean-Marie Le Pen0.88 - 63
Jean Giraudoux0.84 - 64
Gérard de Nerval0.83 - 65
Jacques Maritain0.82 - 66
Antonin Artaud0.81 - 67
Maine de Biran0.79 - 68
Pierre Laval0.76 - 69
Jacques Cartier0.76 - 70
Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme0.76 - 71
Jean Jaurès0.75 - 72
Léon Bloy0.73 - 73
Simone Weil0.73 - 74
Charles Maurras0.71 - 75
Fernand Braudel0.70 - 76
Sacha Guitry0.70 - 77
Lionel Jospin0.70 - 78
Guillaume Apollinaire0.68 - 79
Léopold Sédar Senghor0.67 - 80
Nostradamus0.67 - 81
Aimé Césaire0.66 - 82
Louis Blanc0.66 - 83
Gabriel Marcel0.66 - 84
Jean Bodin0.66 - 85
Philip V of Spain0.66 - 86
Georges Bataille0.66 - 87
Joseph de Maistre0.65 - 88
Francis II of France0.65 - 89
Marie de' Medici0.65 - 90
Raymond Queneau0.65 - 91
Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle0.64 - 92
Simone Veil0.64 - 93
Paul Biya0.64 - 94
Boris Vian0.63 - 95
Claude Simon0.62 - 96
Gustave Flaubert0.60 - 97
Gaston Bachelard0.59 - 98
Charles the Bold0.59 - 99
Marc Bloch0.58 - 100
Claude Lévi-Strauss0.57
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1980s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Donald Trump4 decades - 2
Vladimir Putin3 decades - 3
George W. Bush4 decades - 4
Xi Jinping3 decades - 5
Bill Clinton4 decades - 6
Benjamin Netanyahu4 decades - 7
Freddie Mercury3 decades - 8
Robin Williams7 decades - 9
Steven Spielberg5 decades - 10
Arnold Schwarzenegger4 decades - 11
Narendra Modi2 decades - 12
Jackie Channot measured- - 13
David Bowie5 decades - 14
Meryl Streep4 decades - 15
Bob Marley5 decades - 16
Dolly Parton5 decades - 17
Stephen King8 decades - 18
Sylvester Stallone5 decades - 19
Hugo Chávez3 decades - 20
Hillary Clinton3 decades - 21
Chernot measured- - 22
Elton John5 decades - 23
Ozzy Osbourne3 decades - 24
Pablo Escobar4 decades - 25
John Travolta5 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.