← Fame through time1990-1999
The 1990s
Whose names filled the books of the 1990s - 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 Chinese books during the 1990s, whenever they lived.
- 1
Mao Zedong217 - 2
Deng Xiaoping143 - 3
Jiang Zemin66 - 4
Zhou Enlai63 - 5
Lu Xun43 - 6
Sun Yat-sen28 - 7
Liu Shaoqi20 - 8
Li Peng14 - 9
Lin Biao11 - 10
Confucius11 - 11
Zhu De9.4 - 12
Jiang Qing7.6 - 13
Laozi5.0 - 14
Soong Ching-ling4.5 - 15
Yuan Shikai4.2 - 16
Lee Teng-hui4.0 - 17
Hu Jintao3.2 - 18Gao Ming2.8
- 19
Zhuang Zhou2.8 - 20
Kang Youwei2.1 - 21
Li Hongzhang2.0 - 22
Yan Fu1.9 - 23
Qu Yuan1.5 - 24
Chiang Ching-kuo1.4 - 25
Cao Xueqin1.3
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1990s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Michael Jackson5 decades - 2
Barack Obama2 decades - 3
Steve Jobs4 decades - 4
Pope Leo XIV0 decades - 5
Madonnanot measured- - 6
Osama bin Laden3 decades - 7
Diego Maradona4 decades - 8
Bill Gates4 decades - 9
Brad Pitt3 decades - 10
Nicolás Maduro2 decades - 11
Michael Jordan4 decades - 12
Diana, Princess of Wales0 decades - 13
Kamala Harris1 decades - 14
Johnny Depp3 decades - 15
Tom Cruise4 decades - 16
Tom Hanks4 decades - 17
Tupac Shakur3 decades - 18
Keanu Reeves3 decades - 19
Whitney Houston4 decades - 20
Keir Starmer0 decades - 21
Sandra Bullock3 decades - 22
Jim Carrey3 decades - 23
George Clooney3 decades - 24
Bruce Willis4 decades - 25
Jeff Bezos2 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.