A crowd of names
~0individuals
Named people
Around three thousand distinct people are named in the text.
Debated
The story
Estimates of distinct named individuals cluster around 3,000 (some careful counts land near 2,900–3,400, depending on how repeated and ambiguous names are handled). On top of those are thousands more unnamed people referenced throughout.
How we count
~3,000 is an estimate; counts vary with how duplicate/ambiguous names are resolved.
Sources
- Named-person concordance studies
See our full methodology on the How we count page.