← 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
Elizabeth II8 decades - 2
Winston Churchill13 decades - 3
Freddie Mercury3 decades - 4
Stephen Hawking4 decades - 5
Charlie Chaplin11 decades - 6
John Lennon6 decades - 7
Paul McCartney6 decades - 8
Margaret Thatcher6 decades - 9
J. R. R. Tolkien7 decades - 10
Diana, Princess of Wales0 decades - 11
David Bowie5 decades - 12
Audrey Hepburn7 decades - 13
Elizabeth Taylor9 decades - 14
Alan Turing4 decades - 15
Sean Connery6 decades - 16
Keir Starmer0 decades - 17
Alfred Hitchcock9 decades - 18
Agatha Christie10 decades - 19
George VI10 decades - 20
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh0 decades - 21
George Harrisonnot measured- - 22
George Orwell9 decades - 23
Rowan Atkinson3 decades - 24
Jane Goodall5 decades - 25
Elton John5 decades - 26
Ozzy Osbourne3 decades - 27
George V16 decades - 28
Edward VIII9 decades - 29
Ringo Starr5 decades - 30
Tony Blair3 decades - 31
Michael Caine6 decades - 32
George Michaelnot measured- - 33
Gary Oldman3 decades - 34
Christopher Lee6 decades - 35
Helen Mirren4 decades - 36
Virginia Woolf10 decades - 37
C. S. Lewis10 decades - 38
Eric Clapton5 decades - 39
Mick Jagger5 decades - 40
Julie Andrews7 decades - 41
David Attenborough5 decades - 42
Phil Collins4 decades - 43
Salman Rushdie4 decades - 44
Maggie Smith6 decades - 45
Alan Rickman3 decades - 46
Alex Ferguson2 decades - 47
Emma Thompson3 decades - 48
Judi Dench5 decades - 49
Ian McKellen4 decades - 50
Ridley Scott4 decades - 51
Richard Burtonnot measured- - 52
Rudyard Kipling13 decades - 53
Ian Fleming7 decades - 54
Ralph Fiennes3 decades - 55
Vivien Leigh8 decades - 56
Roger Moore7 decades - 57
Hugh Grant3 decades - 58
Ben Kingsley4 decades - 59
Peter O'Toole6 decades - 60
Brian May3 decades - 61
Jeremy Irons4 decades - 62
Tim Berners-Lee3 decades - 63
Nigel Farage1 decades - 64
Colin Firth2 decades - 65
Hugh Laurie1 decades - 66
Laurence Olivier9 decades - 67
Neil Gaiman2 decades - 68
Neville Chamberlain16 decades - 69
Gordon Brown7 decades - 70
Charles IIInot measured- - 71
H. G. Wells16 decades - 72
Rod Stewart5 decades - 73
Bertrand Russell13 decades - 74
T. E. Lawrence10 decades - 75
Keith Richards4 decades - 76
Theresa May2 decades - 77
Malcolm McDowell5 decades - 78
Richard Attenborough7 decades - 79
Ludwig Wittgenstein8 decades - 80
Ian McShane0 decades - 81
Richard Branson4 decades - 82
Patrick Stewart4 decades - 83
John Major8 decades - 84
Harold Wilson11 decades - 85
Olivia Newton-John5 decades - 86
Charlotte Rampling3 decades - 87
Andy Serkis0 decades - 88
Jimmy Page3 decades - 89
Aldous Huxley10 decades - 90
Gary Lineker1 decades - 91
Richard Dawkins4 decades - 92
Tim Curry4 decades - 93
Anne, Princess Royalnot measured- - 94
Bonnie Tyler0 decades - 95
Aleister Crowley7 decades - 96
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother6 decades - 97
Robert Plant4 decades - 98
John Cleese4 decades - 99
Angela Lansbury6 decades - 100
Vanessa Redgrave6 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.