Follow Business Insider: You've seen Google's annual lists of trendy search terms, featuring things like  robin williams, world cup, and ebola , but those show only the most unusually popular terms, not the most popular terms overall.
Murasaki Shikibu is the best known writer to emerge from Japan's glorious Heian period. Her novel, The Tale of Genji (Genji-monogatari) is considered to be one of the world's finest and earliest novels. Some argue that Murasaki is the world's first modern novelist.
The Akkadian/Sumerian poet Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE) is the worldâs first author known by name and was the daughter of Sargon of Akkad (Sargon the Great, 2334-2279 BCE). Whether Enheduanna was, in fact, a blood relative of Sargonâs or the title was figurative is not known.