This is an alphabetical list of over 700 famous or influential people, with information about their lives and guides to further reading. Each person here was either formally adopted or fostered, lived in an orphanage or children's home, or for some reason was raised for a significant period during childhood by people other than his or her birth parents.
At the end I have included a number of indexes of different kinds: ethnic group, nationality, profession, historical period, age at placement, transracial adoptees, type of placement, contact with birth family, etc.