← Fame through time2000-2009
The 2000s
Whose names filled the books of the 2000s - 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 English books during the 2000s, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus82 - 2
Aristotle12 - 3
Plato10 - 4
Socrates6.3 - 5
Homer5.4 - 6
Johns Hopkins4.4 - 7
Augustus4.0 - 8
Cicero4.0 - 9
George Washington3.5 - 10
Virgil3.1 - 11
George W. Bush2.6 - 12
Ovid2.3 - 13
Saddam Hussein2.3 - 14
Thomas Jefferson2.1 - 15
Abraham Lincoln2.0 - 16
Cleopatra1.8 - 17
Ronald Reagan1.8 - 18
Plutarch1.8 - 19
Bill Clinton1.8 - 20
Herodotus1.6 - 21
Galen1.6 - 22
Origen1.4 - 23
John the Baptist1.4 - 24
Mark Twain1.4 - 25
John F. Kennedy1.4
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 2000s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Elon Musk1 decades - 2
Leonardo DiCaprio3 decades - 3
Justin Trudeau1 decades - 4
Melania Trump1 decades - 5
Nicole Kidman3 decades - 6
Eminem2 decades - 7
Zinedine Zidane3 decades - 8
Christopher Nolan2 decades - 9
Matt Damon3 decades - 10
Jennifer Lopez3 decades - 11
Dwayne Johnson1 decades - 12
Michael Schumacher3 decades - 13
Jennifer Aniston2 decades - 14
Heath Ledger2 decades - 15
Pamela Anderson3 decades - 16
Ben Affleck2 decades - 17
Julia Roberts3 decades - 18
Cameron Diaz3 decades - 19
Gwyneth Paltrow3 decades - 20
Will Smith3 decades - 21
Jason Statham0 decades - 22
Mark Carney1 decades - 23
Celine Dion1 decades - 24
Winona Ryder3 decades - 25
Adam Sandler2 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.