← 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 - 26
Adam Smith1.4 - 27
Rembrandt1.3 - 28
Woodrow Wilson1.3 - 29
Euripides1.2 - 30
Charlemagne1.2 - 31
Walt Disney1.2 - 32
Thucydides1.2 - 33
Bede1.1 - 34
Theodore Roosevelt1.1 - 35
Euclid1.1 - 36Ababa1.1
- 37
Benjamin Franklin1.1 - 38
Hadrian1.1 - 39
James Madison1.1 - 40
Thomas Aquinas1.0 - 41
Winston Churchill1.0 - 42
Livy1.0 - 43
Suharto0.99 - 44
Tony Blair0.97 - 45
Julius Caesar0.96 - 46
John Adams0.96 - 47
Brigham Young0.95 - 48
Ahab0.94 - 49
Richard Nixon0.94 - 50
Ho Chi Minh0.94 - 51
Plotinus0.93 - 52
Sophocles0.92 - 53
Osama bin Laden0.92 - 54
Hosea0.92 - 55
Henry James0.88 - 56
Alexander the Great0.87 - 57
Jane Austen0.87 - 58
Xenophon0.85 - 59
Jimmy Carter0.83 - 60
Pythagoras0.82 - 61
Tertullian0.82 - 62
Aristophanes0.82 - 63
Virginia Woolf0.81 - 64
Pericles0.81 - 65
Goliath0.80 - 66
Henry Ford0.79 - 67
Andrew Jackson0.77 - 68
Al Gore0.76 - 69
William Shakespeare0.75 - 70
Charles Darwin0.75 - 71
Mahatma Gandhi0.73 - 72
Oscar Wilde0.72 - 73
Trajan0.72 - 74
Mary Magdalene0.72 - 75
Solon0.72 - 76
William Henry0.71 - 77
Aeschylus0.71 - 78
Edward Elgar0.70 - 79
Ramakrishna0.70 - 80
John Henry0.70 - 81
John Smith0.69 - 82
Charles Dickens0.69 - 83
Irenaeus0.68 - 84
George Eliot0.68 - 85
Hippocrates0.68 - 86
Frederick Douglass0.68 - 87
Hesiod0.67 - 88
Walt Whitman0.67 - 89
Parmenides0.65 - 90
Malcolm X0.65 - 91
Demosthenes0.65 - 92
Boethius0.65 - 93
John Wesley0.65 - 94
Joseph Smith0.65 - 95
Walter Scott0.64 - 96
Strabo0.63 - 97
Lucretius0.63 - 98
Margaret Thatcher0.63 - 99
Saladin0.62 - 100
George Mason0.62
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.