In our present age of instant information sources (both real and fake), it's easy to search for the biography of a well-known person. However, it was not always this way. The facts about many historical figures weren't written down until years, sometimes decades or even centuries, after they allegedly lived. With these large gaps of time, any evidence of the person's actual existence may be nothing more than stories with an absence of any real proof.
Here is a list of famous people whose names you will recognize but who may never have existed at all, at least not in their popular and commonly accepted form. This list of 6 is only a small number of famous people who may or may not be real. The original list I came across listed 17 people.
Mulan
The tale of a woman dressing as a man and fighting for a
cause (whether family, country, or religion) is a timeless theme (think Joan of
Arc). Some come with proof to prove they are real and others don't have the
necessary credentials of proof. Disney introduced movie fans to the legend of
Mulan, though she was already famous in Chinese literature. It's commonly accepted
that Mulan was a real person who actually did this. But any evidence of this
actually happening is scarce.
The book Chinese Shadow Theatre: History, Popular Religion, and Women Warriors says Mulan might have been a fictional character based in part on Wei Huahu, an actual female warrior from ancient China. As for Mulan herself, the earliest known reference was in an ancient song, The Battle of Mulan. But it doesn't specify when she lived, gives few details of the actual battles she fought, and didn't give a full name for her other than Mulan.
Then there's a text called Lienü zhuan translated as Exemplary Women of Early China, written by Liu Xiang around 18 BC, and packed with over 120 biographies of famous women from ancient China. Despite supposedly being a prominent person, Mulan is not listed. Even though she supposedly lived several hundred years after Xiang first published his book, there's a section at the end for supplemental biographies. No one has ever added Mulan, even though her alleged exploits were quite exceptional.
Shakespeare
Surely the great William Shakespeare was a real person. He
has lots of writings and there are portraits of him. So, how could he not be
real? I'm been to Stratford-Upon-Avon in England and have seen the house said
to be his. Surprisingly, many people are convinced that "William
Shakespeare" was a pen name, and whoever wrote those stories might be lost
to history.
As presented on PBS, there was a man named William Shakespeare, but we know little about him. We don't know where he learned to write, how he learned so much about law, politics, and history, and his will mentioned no plays or sonnets, which you'd think would be foremost on his mind. It sounds like the real Shakespeare didn't write much more than the daily to do list. If true, then who is the real Shakespeare? Plenty of candidates have emerged over the years, like Francis Bacon, Ben Johnson, and Christopher Marlowe, but these possibilities haven't stuck.
There's another legitimate possibility in Edward de Vere—the Earl of Oxford. According to J. Thomas Looney, a schoolteacher who uncovered a great deal about the man, Vere wrote poetry that reads much like what is attributed to Shakespeare. According to this theory, Vere used an assumed name because being one of the nobility he didn't want to be associated with a low-brow art like playwriting. Then, when he died, his followers published his plays under the pen name of some random commoner named William Shakespeare who had died years before.
Robin Hood
The legendary English folk hero, Robin Hood, is well-known
for robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, residing in Sherwood Forest
with his band of merry men, and wooing Maid Marian. The stories are certainly
fictitious, but was Robin Hood a real person or simply based on one? It's
impossible to say if any one individual inspired the legend's creation. The
stories are either totally invented, or are a combination of elements taken
from different historical sources.
Identifying a single person as the basis for the famous outlaw becomes even more difficult as the stories began to grow in popularity in the 13th and 14th centuries. Various English outlaws began calling themselves Robin Hood. Nevertheless, some historians speculate that Robin Hood was based at least in part on nobleman Fulk FitzWarin, who rebelled against King John (one of Robin Hood's foes). FitzWarin's life was later turned into its own medieval tale, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, which holds some similarities to the Robin Hood stories. If he was the basis, then a name change was a good decision. The name Fulk FitzWarin doesn't exactly strike fear into the hearts of villains.
William Tell
William Tell is a Swiss folk hero who allegedly lived in
Switzerland during the early 14th century, when the Hapsburg dynasty of Austria
ruled the land. As the story goes, an Austrian official placed a hat on a pole
in the city of Altdorf and commanded every Swiss subject to remove their caps
in a show of respect as they passed by it. One day, William Tell, a local peasant
accompanied by his son, refused to comply. In response, the Austrians forced
him to shoot an apple off his son's head at 120 paces or face execution. Tell
loaded his crossbow and skillfully shot the apple. He then went on to lead a
small revolt against the Austrians.
Tell is essentially the Swiss version of Robin Hood and, much like the outlaw of Sherwood Forest, he probably never existed. The apple story is extremely similar to a Viking folktale, which most likely was imported to Switzerland at some point and used by Swiss patriots as a rallying cry against their Austrian rulers.
Homer
Homer is the Greek poet who wrote two of the books that your
English teacher probably required you to read in high school—The Iliad and The Odyssey. Despite the popularity and importance of these
mythological epics, their author remains shrouded in mystery. Homer almost
certainly was not the creator of these tales, which likely preceded him by
about 1,000 years. He was simply the first to write them down. As for the poet
himself, some say Homer was blind, while at least one author argues that Homer
was actually a woman.
Some historians believe that Homer was not a single person, but rather a group of Greek scholars. In the end, we will probably never know the answer, but the legacy of Homer's works will continue.
We're all familiar with the Arthurian legend. Even if you
haven't read the stories, you likely saw Monty
Python and the Holy Grail or are familiar with the theatrical production and
subsequent movie, Camelot. In any
case, the British king is said to have claimed the sword, Excalibur, from the
Lady of the Lake and found the aforementioned Holy Grail. These stories are
most likely a mishmash of folklore, but was the Arthur of legend based on a
real man? The first tales of Arthur appeared in the ninth century and chronicle
his battle against the invading Saxon armies, so it's likely that the
individuals who served as the basis for Arthur lived sometime before then. Some
historians suggest the Roman military commander Lucius Artorius Castus as a
possible candidate. Others suggest Riothamus, king of the Britons during the
fifth century.
John Henry
John Henry—the steel-driving man has been immortalized in
folk music since the 1800s. His Ballad of
John Henry tells the story of an ex-slave working on the railroad. He
challenged a steam drill to see which could work faster, and he won. He died
soon afterwards from sheer exhaustion. The greatest heroes die in the end, and
Henry's story has ascended to near-myth because of it.
Thing is, he might actually be a myth. As NPR explains, John Henry is almost certainly a "tall tale," though one based on "historical circumstance." There were obviously men working on railroads back in the 1800s, and steam drills were eventually introduced as a way to speed up labor and reduce costs. More than likely, the rail workers disapproved of a machine taking their jobs, though it's unproven if anybody actually attempted to work faster than one.
