I was inspired to write this thread by the PEI thread. There seem to be a number of very famous people who actually never existed…and as time goes on, the number of people who belive in them seems to increase! Many of these people have houses, monuments, etc., that have become tourista attracyions. Some samples:
-HEIDI (Switzerland): A character in a 19th century child’s story, Heidi is so popular that there are TWO Swiss villages that claim her! Tho house-museums, for atotally fictional character!
-Anne of Green Gables: many japanese highscholl students seem to think she actually existed; you can visit her "house"on Prince Edward Island
-Sherlock Holmes: fictional character, still gets mail!
Any otherers? seems to me that once a legend is established, it is pretty hard to dispute it. Anyway, has anyone claimed to actually “meet” a fictional character? 
William Tell
noname beat me to William Tell, so:
The Little Boy who put his finger in the Dike in Holland (keep your minds out of the gutters). His story was told in a “Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates”, an American book. Reportedly, so many tourists asked about him that they were forced to put up a statue to him, but I haven’t verified this.
Prester John
Robin Hood, in all likelihood.
To this I’d like to add a physicist who is co-author of a number of papers, and reportedly sole author on one. I haven’t been able to find this one, but I’ve found a citation to him as “personal communication”. Some physics grad students I knew made him up and included him as co-author on one paper as a joke, and it snowballed as they kept it up. I don’t want to name him, as I don’t want to get them in trouble.
Jesus comes to mind, as does King Arthur.
Both of those myths may have actually had a live person at the root, mind you; most myths do. But the live person and the mythological person are two vastly different animals.
Paul Bunyan.
Santa Claus.
Years from now, I’m sure people will be writing theses ( thesis pl.?) on the life and crimes of Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
:rolleyes:
Criminy. Do you know something that the vast majority of historians don’t?
Cecil Adams
Okay, I see that I jumped the gun there, as Clothahump later clarified what he meant. Still, even if we grant that there are mythological aspects to the Jesus accounts, that would not at all mean that Jesus did not exist. It would simply mean that there is some fiction mixed in with the factual accounts.
Heck, there are mythological tales told about Abraham Lincoln, but that hardly means that Honest Abe didn’t exist. Ditto for George Washington, Christopher Columbus, and Saint Francis of Assisi. Even if we grant the claim that “the live person and the mythological person are two vastly different animals,” that is entirely different from saying that Jesus himself never existed.
Yup. Here’s Hansje’s statue, erected in 1950. With a plaque in English! Obviously catering to tourists, as the story itself only got popular here after it made it big in America. And IIRC, the story about the boy and the dike (as told in the book referenced by Cal) wasn’t even about Hans Brinker, main character of the book. It was just about some boy.
Now that didn’t take long did it…!
(I was counting the seconds before Jesus was mentioned and somebody attacked)
With regard to the OP, I have had a conversation where someone swore blind that there was really a Yuri Zhivago, but that might have been a one-off.
Couldn’t wait to make trouble, could ya?
Regarding King Arthur (take the easy one first) , there have been historians who were convinced he never existed, and that he’s based on ancient myths. But as I’ve pointed out on these boards before, there was a spate of five books (at least) since 1986 claiming to identify the real King Arthur by name. I’ve got a collection of these at home – The Discovered of King Arthur by Geoffrey Ashe, King Arthur Norma Lorre Goodrich, and others I can’t recall the titles of. Each author really lays into the previous authors, showing whast idiots they are to believe their own theories. Interesting reading. I note that most historians seem to feel that, even if none of these contenders are correct (am I’m amazed that we know so many contenders by name), Arthur was probably a Romano-Celt dux bellorum, kinda like in the current movie. (Although the film King Arthur, from what I’ve seen, would still have Arthurian experts up in arms. Merlin and Lancelot, but no Kay or Bedevere?)
As For Jesus of Nazareth, there have been quite a few writers claiming that he did not, in fact, exist. Some of them were pretty off-the-wall. Some make reasoned arguments. I have several books by G.A. Wells (a professor of German literature at some UK University) that advance this thesis – The Jesus of the Early Christians, The Historical Evidence for Jesus, and the provacatively-titled Did Jesus Exist?, among others. If you’ll consult his bibliographies, you’ll find quite a few authors who questioned the historicity of Jesus.
Heck, I’ve comer across books claiming thar Gautama Siddhartha (Buddha) and Mohammed didn’t exist. Quite a few people (myself included) seriously doubt the existence of Lao Tzu (supposed author of the Tao Te Ching and the founder of Taoism).
The farther back you go, the more questionable things get. Was there a real Gilgamesh at the heart of those stories? Or Hercules? Or Orpheus and Daedalus?
Not extremely famous, but how about Sawney Beane ?
Miss Jane Pittman
Heh. Otto beat me to Cecil Adams
I read about Sawney and his family of cannibals in Paradoc Press’ Big Book of Bad, but nowhere else. I’m delighted to find this refutation of him.
Are you guys kidding?
‘Captain James T Kirk’ - there’s a town in Iowa that claims he’ll be born there in a few centuries. Does that count?
I was very saddened one day when I realized that Tommy, the deaf dumb and blind kid who was a pinball wizard, was not a real person.
Let’s not forget John Henry, the steel-drivin’ man.
CuChullain and Fionn MacCumhaill probably never existed either…although they may be based on actual ancient Irish badasses…
King Arthur may have existed in some form, but Lancelot was certainly a literary invention.
Taro Tsujimoto
At the 1974 National Hockey League Entry Draft, the Buffalo Sabres drafted a player from Japan by the name of Taro Tsujimoto. Which was a huge surprise to everyone, until the team’s general manager Punch Imlach admitted that it was all a joke, and no such player existed. (Although Japan has had a professional ice hockey league since 1966.) But for quite a while afterwards, journalists - despite knowing the truth - wouldn’t continue to jokingly question when Tsujimoto would be joining the team. 
Anyhoo…