← Fame through time1800-1899
The 19th century
Whose names filled the books of the 19th century - 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 19th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Zhu Xi870 - 2
Li Hongzhang149 - 3
Zhang Zhidong86 - 4
Zuo Zongtang43 - 5
Ban Gu40 - 6
Ge Hong40 - 7Chen Shou14
- 8
Mao Zedong12 - 9
Lu Xun11
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 19th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
George Armstrong Custer7 decades - 2
Liliʻuokalaninot measured- - 3
Sacagawea9 decades - 4
Kamehameha I13 decades - 5
Robert Peary3 decades - 6
Meriwether Lewis19 decades - 7
Kit Carson18 decades - 8
Kalākaua1 decades - 9
William Clark22 decades - 10
Hugh Glass5 decades - 11
John Sutter9 decades - 12
Zebulon Pike12 decades - 13
George W. De Long1 decades - 14
Jedediah Smithnot measured- - 15
Thomas Moran15 decades - 16
Jim Bridgernot measured- - 17
John Colternot measured- - 18
John Lloyd Stephens4 decades - 19
Josephine Diebitsch Pearynot measured- - 20
James W. Marshallnot measured- - 21
James Beckwourthnot measured- - 22
Adolphus Greelynot measured- - 23
Liver-Eating Johnsonnot measured- - 24
Ezra Meekernot measured- - 25
Nathaniel Palmer2 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.