← 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 - 26
Nicolas Cage3 decades - 27
Kurt Cobain3 decades - 28
Quentin Tarantino3 decades - 29
Nicolas Sarkozy5 decades - 30
Mel Gibson4 decades - 31
Rowan Atkinson3 decades - 32
Demi Moore3 decades - 33
José Mourinho1 decades - 34
Selenanot measured- - 35
Russell Crowe2 decades - 36
Jodie Foster4 decades - 37
Boris Johnson2 decades - 38
Kevin Costner3 decades - 39
Eddie Murphy4 decades - 40
George Michaelnot measured- - 41
Gary Oldman3 decades - 42
Friedrich Merz3 decades - 43
Claudia Sheinbaum1 decades - 44
Monica Bellucci3 decades - 45
Carrie Fisher4 decades - 46
Ursula von der Leyen2 decades - 47
Michelle Obama2 decades - 48
Ayrton Senna3 decades - 49
Daniel Day-Lewis3 decades - 50
Sean Penn4 decades - 51
Michelle Pfeiffer4 decades - 52
Anthony Bourdain1 decades - 53
Julianne Moore3 decades - 54
Viktor Orbán1 decades - 55
Naruhito1 decades - 56
Antonio Banderas4 decades - 57
Whoopi Goldberg4 decades - 58
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad2 decades - 59
Val Kilmer3 decades - 60
James Gandolfini1 decades - 61
Tim Burton3 decades - 62
Emma Thompson3 decades - 63
Sharon Stone3 decades - 64
Alec Baldwin3 decades - 65
Michael J. Fox4 decades - 66
Kevin Spacey3 decades - 67
Carlo Ancelotti2 decades - 68
Olaf Scholz2 decades - 69
Jean-Claude Van Damme3 decades - 70
Bryan Cranston0 decades - 71
Hans Zimmer3 decades - 72
Sanae Takaichi0 decades - 73
Enya3 decades - 74
Mike Pence2 decades - 75
Garry Kasparov4 decades - 76
Andrea Bocelli3 decades - 77
Jair Bolsonaro0 decades - 78
Willem Dafoe3 decades - 79
Courteney Cox1 decades - 80
Ralph Fiennes3 decades - 81
"Weird Al" Yankovicnot measured- - 82
Hugh Grant3 decades - 83
Steve Irwin2 decades - 84
Ellen DeGeneres3 decades - 85
Droupadi Murmunot measured- - 86
Michael Clarke Duncan0 decades - 87
Jet Li4 decades - 88
Jamie Lee Curtis4 decades - 89
Mike Myers3 decades - 90
Tim Berners-Lee3 decades - 91
Woody Harrelson3 decades - 92
Magic Johnson4 decades - 93
Viggo Mortensen2 decades - 94
Nigel Farage1 decades - 95
Colin Firth2 decades - 96
Hugh Laurie1 decades - 97
Abdullah II of Jordan0 decades - 98
Courtney Love3 decades - 99
Neil Gaiman2 decades - 100
Peter Jackson6 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.