← Fame through time1900-1999
The 20th century
Whose names filled the books of the 20th 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 French books during the 20th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Voltaire23 - 2
Louis XIV of France15 - 3
Molière12 - 4
Stendhal10 - 5
Victor Hugo9.4 - 6
Louis XVI of France7.0 - 7
Montesquieu6.4 - 8
Louis XV of France6.2 - 9
François Fénelon4.6 - 10
Joan of Arc4.0 - 11
Napoleon III3.6 - 12
George Sand3.4 - 13
Louis XVIII of France3.1 - 14
François Mitterrand2.3 - 15
Pierre de Marivaux2.2 - 16
Anatole France2.2 - 17
Marie Antoinette2.1 - 18
Francis de Sales2.0 - 19
André Gide1.9 - 20
Léon Blum1.9 - 21
Jacques Chirac1.8 - 22
Charles X of France1.8 - 23
Paul Valéry1.7 - 24
Auguste Comte1.7 - 25
Marcel Proust1.7
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 20th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Benito Mussolini11 decades - 2
Sophia Loren7 decades - 3
Pope John Paul I2 decades - 4
Monica Bellucci3 decades - 5
Silvio Berlusconi6 decades - 6
Carlo Ancelotti2 decades - 7
Pope Paul VI6 decades - 8
Pope John XXIII14 decades - 9
Pope Pius XII8 decades - 10
Andrea Bocelli3 decades - 11
Sergio Mattarella4 decades - 12
Claudia Cardinale6 decades - 13
Luciano Pavarotti5 decades - 14
Pier Paolo Pasolini8 decades - 15
Giorgio Armani5 decades - 16
Sonia Gandhi3 decades - 17
Antonio Gramsci9 decades - 18
Federico Fellini8 decades - 19
Enrico Fermi10 decades - 20
Isabella Rossellini5 decades - 21
Adriano Celentano6 decades - 22
Umberto Eco7 decades - 23
Ennio Morricone6 decades - 24
Enzo Ferrari10 decades - 25
Marcello Mastroianni7 decades - 26
Sergio Leone6 decades - 27
Gina Lollobrigida7 decades - 28
Roberto Benigni5 decades - 29
Aldo Moro8 decades - 30
Guglielmo Marconi13 decades - 31
Bud Spencer5 decades - 32
Franco Baresi3 decades - 33
Oriana Fallaci6 decades - 34
Maria Montessori12 decades - 35
Umberto II of Italynot measured- - 36
Roberto Mancini3 decades - 37
Terence Hill5 decades - 38
Claudio Ranieri1 decades - 39
Luigi Pirandello13 decades - 40
Primo Levi11 decades - 41
Mario Draghi3 decades - 42
Giorgio Napolitano8 decades - 43
Giulio Andreotti8 decades - 44
Victor Emmanuel III of Italy8 decades - 45
Giuseppe Contenot measured- - 46
Rudolph Valentino10 decades - 47
Amedeo Modigliani10 decades - 48
Gianni Versace4 decades - 49
Reinhold Messner5 decades - 50
Vittorio De Sica9 decades - 51
Italo Calvino8 decades - 52
Ornella Muti5 decades - 53
Padre Pio7 decades - 54
Romano Prodi6 decades - 55
Roberto Rossellini8 decades - 56
Bernardo Bertolucci6 decades - 57
Donatella Versace3 decades - 58
Eros Ramazzotti4 decades - 59
Bettino Craxi6 decades - 60
Paolo Rossinot measured- - 61
Frank Capra9 decades - 62
Sandro Pertini8 decades - 63
Fabio Capello3 decades - 64
Francesco Cossiga6 decades - 65
Franco Nero5 decades - 66
Valentinonot measured- - 67
Dino Zoff4 decades - 68
Luchino Visconti12 decades - 69
Michelangelo Antonioni8 decades - 70
Julius Evola7 decades - 71
Alcide De Gasperi8 decades - 72
Salvatore Schillaci0 decades - 73
Alberto Sordi7 decades - 74
Toto Cutugno4 decades - 75
Anna Magnani8 decades
- 76
Enrico Caruso12 decades - 77
Lucky Lucianonot measured- - 78
Pietro Badoglio11 decades - 79
Luciano Spalletti1 decades - 80
Vittorio Gassman8 decades - 81
Monica Vitti6 decades - 82
Pierluigi Collina1 decades - 83
Cesare Pavese9 decades - 84
Marcello Lippi3 decades - 85
Clara Petacci8 decades - 86
Grazia Deledda13 decades - 87
Maurizio Sarri1 decades - 88
Rocco Siffredi3 decades - 89
Carlo Azeglio Ciampi4 decades - 90
Ferruccio Lamborghininot measured- - 91
Dario Fo7 decades - 92
Mengistu Haile Mariam5 decades - 93
Antonio Tajani3 decades - 94
Giuseppe Meazza3 decades - 95
Giovanni Trapattoni4 decades - 96
Gianluca Vialli3 decades - 97
Galeazzo Ciano9 decades - 98
Danny Hustonnot measured- - 99
Renzo Piano6 decades - 100
Giorgio Morodernot measured-
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.