The new pope chose the name Leo XIV. That made me curious about the distribution of names of popes and so I made the graph below. (I’m Protestant, so wasn’t familiar to me.)
Looks like Leo is tied with Clement for fourth place, the top three names being John, Benedict, and Gregory.
There are a few oddities in counting the names due to the time in the Middle Ages when there was disagreement over who was pope. For this reason some popes are listed twice, sorta like how Grover Cleveland and Donald Trump each appear twice in the list of US presidents. And although the last pope named John was John XXIII, 21 popes have been named John: there was no John XX due to a clerical error, and John XVI was declared an antipope.
I also made a higher resolution PDF.
It’s worth noting that papal names have been chosen from a smaller set recently (that is, in the last millennium or so). Until Francis the last pope to pick a name that hadn’t been used before was Lando in 913, and the last pope to keep his birth name was John XV in 985. This omits John Paul, which was a new name but a composition of two old names. These two facts are connected – once popes start choosing names, it makes sense that they’d pick the names of previous popes they want to emulate.
Even Francis is an example of this, except his name was after Saint Francis of Assisi. When he was elected I was surprised there had never been a Pope Francis before.
The shape of that “curve” seems familiar. What is it?
Interestingly, Benedict IX had -three- terms as pope. So, the number of pontificates is greater than the number of popes.
Also interesting that the only names of the original 12 apostles are Peter and John. So, no Andrew, no Matthew, no James, etc. I never realized that before.
Pope Leo XIV is a mathematician!
I recommend that in this graph you break ties by using the time order of the most recent pope of that name. Right now you use alphabetical order which makes it harder to follow (for example by seeing that Francis was the most recent before this one).