← 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
Abraham Lincoln22 decades - 2
Theodore Roosevelt16 decades - 3
Simón Bolívar21 decades - 4
Woodrow Wilson14 decades - 5
Otto von Bismarck16 decades - 6
Ulysses S. Grant16 decades - 7
James A. Garfield16 decades - 8
Andrew Jackson22 decades - 9
William McKinley16 decades - 10
Grover Cleveland14 decades - 11
John Quincy Adams22 decades - 12
Chester A. Arthur15 decades - 13
William Howard Taft12 decades - 14
William Henry Harrison22 decades - 15
Andrew Johnson22 decades - 16
James Buchanan22 decades - 17
Napoleon III21 decades - 18
Martin Van Buren21 decades - 19
John Tyler22 decades - 20
Zachary Taylor18 decades - 21
James K. Polk20 decades - 22
Rutherford B. Hayes16 decades - 23
Benjamin Harrison19 decades - 24
Millard Fillmore19 decades - 25
Franklin Pierce20 decades - 26
Joseph Smith22 decades - 27
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austrianot measured- - 28
Paul von Hindenburg10 decades - 29
Benjamin Disraeli18 decades - 30
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellingtonnot measured- - 31
Philippe Pétain8 decades - 32
P. T. Barnum17 decades - 33
David Lloyd George11 decades - 34
Jefferson Davis20 decades - 35
José de San Martín21 decades - 36
Cecil Rhodes12 decades - 37
Benito Juárez16 decades - 38
Georges Clemenceau13 decades - 39
Porfirio Díaz16 decades - 40
William Ewart Gladstone18 decades - 41
Frederick III, German Emperornot measured- - 42
Maximilian I of Mexiconot measured- - 43
Klemens von Metternich0 decades - 44
H. H. Asquith11 decades - 45
Muhammad Ali of Egypt0 decades - 46
Joachim Murat21 decades - 47
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon8 decades - 48
John C. Calhoun22 decades - 49
Adolphe Thiers15 decades - 50
Emmeline Pankhurst7 decades - 51
Jean Jaurès13 decades - 52
Antonio López de Santa Anna18 decades - 53
Ferdinand I of Austrianot measured- - 54
Brigham Young19 decades - 55
Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour10 decades - 56
Robert Peel22 decades - 57
Joseph Bonaparte22 decades - 58
Pyotr Stolypin6 decades - 59
Arthur Balfour15 decades - 60
Yuan Shikai11 decades - 61
Crazy Horse15 decades - 62
William Randolph Hearst12 decades - 63
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerstonnot measured- - 64
Antonio José de Sucre21 decades - 65
Fridtjof Nansen13 decades - 66
Louis Bonaparte22 decades - 67
Sam Houston20 decades - 68
Patrice de MacMahon0 decades - 69
Raymond Poincaré13 decades - 70
Davy Crockett19 decades - 71
Joseph Pulitzer14 decades - 72
Alexander Griboyedov13 decades - 73
Bernardo O'Higgins21 decades - 74
John A. Macdonald16 decades - 75
Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria0 decades - 76
Agustín I of Mexico0 decades - 77
Frederick William IV of Prussia21 decades - 78
William H. Seward19 decades - 79
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisburynot measured- - 80
Michel Ney18 decades - 81
Itō Hirobumi0 decades - 82
Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener0 decades - 83
Sergei Witte9 decades - 84
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbournenot measured- - 85
Manuel Belgrano21 decades - 86
Félix Faure18 decades - 87
Paul Kruger14 decades - 88
William Jennings Bryan13 decades - 89
Sadi Carnotnot measured- - 90
William II of the Netherlands0 decades - 91
Hannibal Hamlin18 decades - 92
Wyatt Earp10 decades - 93
Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover0 decades - 94
Bonar Law12 decades - 95
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento18 decades - 96
John C. Breckinridge17 decades - 97
Venustiano Carranza12 decades - 98
Aristide Briand12 decades - 99
Menelik II14 decades - 100
Saigō Takamori0 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.