These celebrity birthday statistics come from our own database of famous people, the same records that power every birthday page on Who Shares My Birthday. The data comes from several sources, including Wikipedia, Wikidata and Pantheon. Our editorial team checks dates and writes original profiles for a growing share of the database, with new reviewed pages added every week. We hold a similar number of famous people for every date of the year, so instead of simple headcounts we rank birthdays by combined fame, and we compare birth decades against the size of the world's population at the time. All figures are recalculated live from the database.
Celebrity birthday statistics by month
Each month's fame index is the average combined fame per day in that month, so short months like February are not penalised. An average month scores 100.
Most common celebrity birthdays: top 10 dates
The ten dates whose famous people have the highest combined fame (the total popularity score of everyone born that day). An average date scores 100.
- 1April 15Leonardo da Vinci, Leonhard Euler, Nikita Khrushchev127fame index
- 2September 29Miguel de Cervantes, Lech Wałęsa, Enrico Fermi127fame index
- 3January 25Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Thomas Aquinas, Virginia Woolf125fame index
- 4June 21Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Jean-Paul Sartre, Lana Del Rey124fame index
- 5April 22Vladimir Lenin, Immanuel Kant, J. Robert Oppenheimer123fame index
- 6February 22George Washington, Frédéric Chopin, Arthur Schopenhauer122fame index
- 7November 7Marie Curie, Albert Camus, Leon Trotsky122fame index
- 8January 15Martin Luther King Jr., Molière, Gamal Abdel Nasser120fame index
- 9July 6George W. Bush, Frida Kahlo, Tenzin Gyatso119fame index
- 10January 8Elvis Presley, Stephen Hawking, Kim Jong-un119fame index
Celebrity birthday statistics by decade
Raw counts favour recent decades simply because far more people were alive. The fame-density column corrects for population growth: it shows famous people per 100 million people alive in the world at the start of that decade.
| Decade | Famous people (raw count) | World pop. (approx.) | Fame density: per 100M people alive |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1800s | 96 | 0.99bn | 9.7 |
| 1810s | 110 | 1.04bn | 10.6 |
| 1820s | 95 | 1.09bn | 8.7 |
| 1830s | 127 | 1.15bn | 11.0 |
| 1840s | 143 | 1.21bn | 11.8 |
| 1850s | 154 | 1.26bn | 12.2 |
| 1860s | 207 | 1.30bn | 15.9 |
| 1870s | 222 | 1.35bn | 16.4 |
| 1880s | 312 | 1.43bn | 21.8 |
| 1890s | 366 | 1.52bn | 24.1 |
| 1900s | 392 | 1.65bn | 23.8 |
| 1910s | 407 | 1.75bn | 23.3 |
| 1920s | 555 | 1.86bn | 29.8 |
| 1930s | 593 | 2.07bn | 28.6 |
| 1940s | 864 | 2.30bn | 37.6 |
| 1950s | 784 | 2.54bn | 30.9 |
| 1960s | 860 | 3.02bn | 28.5 |
| 1970s | 851 | 3.70bn | 23.0 |
| 1980s | 1,110 | 4.44bn | 25.0 |
| 1990s | 681 | 5.33bn | 12.8 |
| 2000s | 174 | 6.14bn | 2.8 |
| 2010s | 3 | 6.96bn | <0.1 |
Plus 1,154 famous people born before 1800 (not shown; no reliable decade population figures).
What do most famous people do? Celebrity statistics by profession
Each person is counted once, in their main field. Fields are ranked by combined fame (the total popularity score of everyone in the field), with the raw count and share of the database alongside.
Where were the most famous people born?
Countries are shaded by the number of famous people in our database born there, using present-day borders. Darker means more famous people; the colour scale is logarithmic so smaller countries still stand out.
No famous people in our database · famous people born there (log scale)
1 to 2400| # | Country | Famous people | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 2,400 | 23.4% |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 1,051 | 10.2% |
| 3 | France | 749 | 7.3% |
| 4 | Germany | 592 | 5.8% |
| 5 | Italy | 471 | 4.6% |
| 6 | Japan | 358 | 3.5% |
| 7 | Russia | 347 | 3.4% |
| 8 | Spain | 257 | 2.5% |
| 9 | India | 218 | 2.1% |
| 10 | Poland | 142 | 1.4% |
Not mapped: 45 people born in former multi-country states (e.g. the Soviet Union) and 68 with no recorded birthplace. Small countries such as Singapore or Malta appear in the data but are too small to show at this map scale.
How we calculate these figures
- Every person in our database has a Wikidata entry with a full date of birth; people without an exact birth date are not included.
- Our database holds about 25 famous people for each calendar date by design, so raw counts per date or month mainly reflect the calendar. We therefore rank dates and months by combined fame: the sum of each person's popularity score, which is based on how many Wikipedia language editions have an article about them.
- Fame index = combined fame of a date (or average per day for a month) ÷ the average date × 100. A score of 150 means 50% more combined fame than an average birthday.
- Fame density = famous people born in the decade ÷ approximate world population at the start of that decade × 100 million. Population figures are rounded historical estimates (UN and HYDE / Our World in Data), so treat the density column as a guide, not an exact measure.
- Profession uses each person's primary category in our database (the first field listed for them), so every person is counted exactly once and the shares add up to 100%.
- Birthplace country is the last part of each person's recorded birthplace, converted to present-day borders where the historical state corresponds clearly to one country (for example Nazi Germany or West Germany to Germany). People born in former multi-country states such as the Soviet Union or Austria-Hungary are left off the map rather than guessed.
- Our database leans towards people with English-language Wikipedia coverage, and recent decades contain fewer people who have had time to become famous, so the newest decades are under-counted.
Questions people ask
Frequently asked questions
- What is the most common celebrity birthday?
- Our database holds about 25 famous people for every date, so we rank birthdays by combined fame instead of headcount. On that measure the most famous birthday is April 15 (fame index 127, where an average date scores 100), the birthday of Leonardo da Vinci, Leonhard Euler and Nikita Khrushchev. September 29, January 25, June 21 complete the top four.
- Which month has the most famous birthdays?
- January has the most famous birthdays, with a fame index of 102 per day (average month = 100). October scores lowest at 98.
- Why don't you just count birthdays per date?
- We deliberately collect a similar number of famous people for every date of the year, so a simple count would mostly reflect how many days each month has. Combined fame, the total popularity score of everyone born on a day, shows which birthdays belong to the most famous people.
- Which decade produced the most famous people?
- By raw count the 1980s lead with 1,110 famous people. Adjusted for world population, the 1940s come out on top with 37.6 famous people per 100 million people alive.
- Which country has produced the most famous people?
- The United States is the birthplace of the most famous people in our database (2,400), followed by the United Kingdom (1,051) and France (749). Our data leans towards people with English-language Wikipedia coverage, which favours English-speaking countries.
- What is the most common profession among famous people?
- By headcount, film is the largest field in our database, with 1,512 famous people (14.7%). Ranked by combined fame, politics comes first, led by Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler.
- How many famous people are in the database?
- Our database currently holds 10,260 famous people with a full date of birth, and the statistics on this page update automatically as we add more.
- Where do these celebrity birthday statistics come from?
- They are calculated from our own database of famous people, built from Wikidata birth dates and Wikipedia articles and reviewed by the Who Shares My Birthday editorial team.