The Ten Most Famous People in the World

It's Brahbrah.

 

I would also like to submit this list!

 

Hu Jintao.

Come on, people. He's in his seventh year as the leader of 1.3 billion people.

I think most of these lists are way too North American-centric.

 

To be fair, everyone's going to produce a slanted list based on their experiences, interests and surrounding culture, even if they don't mean to. I'm sure if we got a list from someone in India, there'd probably be some Bollywood and cricket stars that never would have crossed our minds. A Brazilian list would include the likes of Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Kaka. And an Iceland list would be Bjork spelled letter by letter twice.

 

Just throwing out some more from the world leaders division. Ahmadinejad. Sarkozy. Gordon Brown. Merkel. Ban Ki-moon.

 

1 and 3, yes. 2, a good percentage would get depending on the context of your question.

 

I'll echo the suggestion that many of the lists are too North American based.

I have no doubt that Michael Jackson was top 10, but I'll leave him off... seeing as how he's dead and all.

In no particular order...


Obama
Queen Elizabeth II
Michael Schumacher
David Beckham
Ronaldinho
Fernando Alonso
Michael Jordan
Arnold Schwarzenegger
George W. Bush
Madonna

More or less. Cristiano Ronaldo, Yao Ming, Jackie Chan, Oprah. I suspect there's way too much of the world that doesn't give a shit about golf for Tiger to be too high on the list -- I suspect a dozen soccer players could rank higher.

 

To me, any sports star, past or present, doesn't fit the bill, because people's interests are so diverse that there isn't a universal agreement on their fame. For example, I'd never put Schumacher or Beckham on any such list, and there are others who are mentioned that I've never heard of. Same with entertainers. People's tastes are so divergent that you can't have a consensus of who's THE top 10 most famous. I think the following are 10 people that most everyone around the world in almost any context would recognize, either by sight or by the understanding of what they've produced.

1. Obama (Any current U.S. president tops the list, but Obama seems to have much more of a universal appeal than any we've had in awhile.)
2. The Pope (Again, whoever sits in this office attains that stature.)
3. The Queen of England
4. The Dalai Lama
5. Putin (I wouldn't quite say any Russian leader would fill the bill, but in the case of this one, yes.)
6. Former U.S. presidents (As a group, they retain a certain measure of worldwide fame after they leave office.)
7. Osama bin-Ladin
8. Nelson Mandela
9. Kim Jong-Il
10. Bill Gates

 

Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think there's any way Bono is more famous than Britney Spears.

 

This. Between India and China you've got more than 1/3rd of the world's population. That's where these names should be coming from.

 

I have never read about a lot of these foreigners on Perez Hilton, so I'm going to go ahead and doubt their fame.