← 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
Charlie Chaplin11 decades - 2
Audrey Hepburn7 decades - 3
Elizabeth Taylor9 decades - 4
Sean Connery6 decades - 5
Rowan Atkinson3 decades - 6
Michael Caine6 decades - 7
Gary Oldman3 decades - 8
Christopher Lee6 decades - 9
Helen Mirren4 decades - 10
Julie Andrews7 decades - 11
David Attenborough5 decades - 12
Maggie Smith6 decades - 13
Alan Rickman3 decades - 14
Emma Thompson3 decades - 15
Judi Dench5 decades - 16
Ian McKellen4 decades - 17
Richard Burtonnot measured- - 18
Ralph Fiennes3 decades - 19
Vivien Leigh8 decades - 20
Roger Moore7 decades - 21
Hugh Grant3 decades - 22
Ben Kingsley4 decades - 23
Peter O'Toole6 decades - 24
Jeremy Irons4 decades - 25
Colin Firth2 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.