← Fame through time2016
2016
Who the world actually read about in 2016 - readers across every language edition we measure, whoever they were and whenever they lived.
Most read
Who people actually looked up in 2016, across every language edition we measure.
- 1
Donald Trump81.8M - 2
David Bowie21.2M - 3
Pablo Escobar20.5M - 4
Melania Trump20.2M - 5
Hillary Clinton19.1M - 6
Elizabeth II18.3M - 7
Muhammad Ali17.7M - 8
Barack Obama17.5M - 9
Cristiano Ronaldo15.7M - 10
Leonardo DiCaprio15.3M - 11
Carrie Fisher15M - 12
Lionel Messi14.9M - 13
O. J. Simpson14.2M - 14
Ivanka Trump13.8M - 15
Bernie Sanders12.8M - 16
Michael Phelps12.3M - 17
Adolf Hitler12.3M - 18
Dwayne Johnson11.9M - 19
Alan Rickman11.6M - 20
Stephen Hawking11M - 21
Stephen Curry10.7M - 22
Ronald Reagan10.5M - 23
Bill Clinton10.4M - 24
Margot Robbie10.4M - 25
George Michaelnot measured10.3M
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in 2016, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Natalie Portman2 decades - 2
Beyoncé2 decades - 3
Zlatan Ibrahimović0 decades - 4
Serena Williams2 decades - 5
Britney Spears2 decades - 6
Roger Federer2 decades - 7
Jessica Alba2 decades - 8
Chris Evansnot measured- - 9Ivanka Trump1 decades
- 10
Meghan, Duchess of Sussexnot measured- - 11
Rami Malek0 decades - 12
Xabi Alonso1 decades - 13
Justin Timberlake2 decades - 14
Nayib Bukelenot measured- - 15
Paris Hilton2 decades - 16
Tulsi Gabbard0 decades - 17
Fernando Alonsonot measured- - 18
Tom Hiddleston0 decades - 19
Elijah Woodnot measured- - 20
Sienna Miller0 decades - 21
Alicia Keys2 decades - 22
Anna Kournikova1 decades - 23
Joseph Gordon-Levitt0 decades - 24
Péter Magyarnot measured- - 25
Alexis Bledel0 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.