← Fame through time2000-2099
The 21st century
Whose names filled the books of the 21st 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 English books during the 21st century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus102 - 2
Aristotle13 - 3
Plato11 - 4
Socrates6.5 - 5
Homer5.4 - 6
Cicero4.2 - 7
Augustus4.1 - 8
Johns Hopkins4.0 - 9
Virgil3.3 - 10
George Washington3.0 - 11
George W. Bush2.2 - 12
Ovid2.2 - 13
Plutarch1.9 - 14
Thomas Jefferson1.9 - 15
Cleopatra1.9 - 16
Abraham Lincoln1.9 - 17
Galen1.8 - 18
Saddam Hussein1.7 - 19
Ronald Reagan1.7 - 20
Herodotus1.6 - 21
Origen1.5 - 22
John the Baptist1.5 - 23
Bill Clinton1.5 - 24
Adam Smith1.4 - 25
Mark Twain1.4 - 26
Ahab1.3 - 27
Charlemagne1.3 - 28
John F. Kennedy1.3 - 29
Euripides1.3 - 30
Thucydides1.3 - 31
Hosea1.2 - 32
Woodrow Wilson1.2 - 33
Rembrandt1.2 - 34
Barack Obama1.2 - 35
Livy1.2 - 36
Hadrian1.1 - 37
Bede1.1 - 38
Winston Churchill1.1 - 39
Walt Disney1.1 - 40
Thomas Aquinas1.1 - 41
Theodore Roosevelt1.0 - 42
Euclid1.0 - 43
Benjamin Franklin1.0 - 44
Julius Caesar1.00 - 45
Sophocles0.97 - 46
Goliath0.95 - 47
Plotinus0.94 - 48
Jane Austen0.92 - 49
James Madison0.92 - 50
Richard Nixon0.92 - 51
Xenophon0.92 - 52
Alexander the Great0.90 - 53Ababa0.89
- 54
John Adams0.89 - 55
Pythagoras0.88 - 56
Pericles0.87 - 57
Tertullian0.87 - 58
Edward Elgar0.87 - 59
Aristophanes0.84 - 60
Virginia Woolf0.83 - 61
Henry James0.83 - 62
Ho Chi Minh0.82 - 63
Charles Darwin0.80 - 64
Charles Dickens0.79 - 65
Tony Blair0.79 - 66
Osama bin Laden0.78 - 67
William Shakespeare0.76 - 68
Jimmy Carter0.76 - 69
Mary Magdalene0.76 - 70
Brigham Young0.75 - 71
Irenaeus0.75 - 72
Suharto0.75 - 73
Aeschylus0.74 - 74
Oscar Wilde0.73 - 75
Henry Ford0.72 - 76
Hippocrates0.72 - 77
Andrew Jackson0.71 - 78
Hesiod0.71 - 79
Trajan0.71 - 80
Solon0.69 - 81
John Knox0.69 - 82
Margaret Thatcher0.68 - 83
Lucan0.68 - 84
Demosthenes0.68 - 85
George Eliot0.68 - 86
Lucretius0.68 - 87
Saladin0.67 - 88
Frederick Douglass0.67 - 89
Strabo0.66 - 90
Mahatma Gandhi0.65 - 91
John Henry0.65 - 92
Parmenides0.65 - 93
John Locke0.65 - 94
John Wesley0.65 - 95
Boethius0.64 - 96
Malcolm X0.64 - 97
Archimedes0.64 - 98
Epicurus0.64 - 99
William Henry0.63 - 100
John Smith0.63
Most read
Who people actually looked up in the 21st century, across every language edition we measure (2015-2026 only - readership is measured from July 2015).
- 1
Donald Trump336.3M - 2
Elizabeth II223.3M - 3
Cristiano Ronaldo211.6M - 4
Elon Musk207.7M - 5
Lionel Messi178.6M - 6
Vladimir Putin136.2M - 7
Joe Biden124M - 8
Freddie Mercury122.9M - 9
Jeffrey Dahmer120.3M - 10
Adolf Hitler118.7M - 11
Taylor Swift117.8M - 12Barack Obama115.9M
- 13
Michael Jackson114.4M - 14
Pablo Escobar114.4M - 15
Kamala Harris113.6M - 16
Dwayne Johnson111M - 17
Queen Victorianot measured105.6M - 18
Keanu Reeves103.4M - 19
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh102.1M - 20
Elvis Presley99.6M - 21
Tom Cruise99.4M - 22
LeBron James99.2M - 23
Jeffrey Epstein98.7M - 24
Michael Jordan98.4M - 25
Ariana Grande98M
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 21st century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Scarlett Johansson2 decades - 2
Leonardo DiCaprio3 decades - 3
Tom Hollandnot measured- - 4
Angelina Jolie2 decades - 5
Nicole Kidman3 decades - 6
Charlize Theron2 decades - 7
Zendaya0 decades - 8
Jennifer Lawrence1 decades - 9
Matt Damon3 decades - 10
Natalie Portman2 decades - 11Dwayne Johnson1 decades
- 12
Chris Pratt0 decades - 13
Emma Watson1 decades - 14
Jennifer Aniston2 decades - 15
Heath Ledger2 decades - 16
Pamela Anderson3 decades - 17
Ben Affleck2 decades - 18
Bradley Cooper1 decades - 19
Julia Roberts3 decades - 20
Emma Stone1 decades - 21
Kim Kardashian1 decades - 22
Cameron Diaz3 decades - 23
John Cena1 decades - 24
Kate Winslet3 decades - 25
Andrew Garfield0 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.