What the map shows
Notable People is a world map with one name pinned to every place: the most notable person born there. Zoom in on your city, your town, or the village your grandparents came from, and the map tells you who it produced. At world scale you see the giants; the closer you zoom, the more local the names get, until you are reading about a footballer, a poet or a nineteenth-century mayor you have never heard of.
It was made by Topi Tjukanov, a Finnish cartographer, and was inspired by The Pudding's People Map of the US. It runs in the browser, needs no account, and is free.
How to use it
- Open the map and zoom with the scroll wheel or a pinch; drag to move. Every dot is a birthplace, and the name on it is the most notable person born there.
- Use the category buttons to filter: All, Culture, Discovery and Science, Leadership, or Sports and Games. The names change when you switch, so zoom out and back in.
- Turn on Show real place names to see the town under each person, which is the quickest way to find your own.
Where the data comes from
The names come from A cross-verified database of notable people, 3500BC-2018AD, published by Morgane Laouenan and colleagues in Scientific Data in 2022. It merges Wikipedia and Wikidata into about 2.2 million people with a known birthplace and ranks each by notability, a score built from things like how many language editions of Wikipedia have an article about them and how often those pages are read. The map keeps one person per unique birthplace: the highest-ranked.
That rule explains most surprises. If your town shows someone you have never heard of, the person you expected was probably born somewhere else, often a hospital in the next city, or the score favoured someone with articles in more languages, which tilts the map towards athletes, musicians and heads of state.
Questions
Is Notable People free?
Yes. It is a personal project published on GitHub Pages, with no account, no ads and nothing to buy.
Can I search for a person by name?
No. The map is meant to be explored by place: zoom to wherever you are curious about and read the names. The place-name toggle gets you there faster.
Why is my city showing the wrong person?
The map shows the highest-ranked person whose recorded birthplace is that exact location. A better-known person born in a suburb, in a hospital in a neighbouring town, or with no birthplace recorded in Wikidata will not appear there.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, in a mobile browser, with pinch to zoom. The names are small at world scale, so zoom in before reading.