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List of left-handed people

Definition and Guide

  • A left-hander is a person who is more skillful with the left hand than with the right: a left-hander will probably (but not limit to) use the left hand for tasks such as personal care, cooking, and so on.
  • Writing with right hand alone does not necessarily indicate one's right-handedness. The world is right-handed-dominant and many natural born left-handers were wrongfully taught to write with their right hand. Consequently, a lot of born left-handers may write with right hand but use left hand for everything else.
  • However, if a person writes with left hand then he/she is most likely left-handed.
  • People who are forced to use their left hand because their right hand is not available for use (for example, due to injury or disease) should not be included on this list.
  • Contrary to popular belief, left-footers are not necessarily left-handed, which causes much confusion when it comes to famous soccer players. For example players like Maradona are believed to be left-handed just because they use their left foot in soccer. There is actually a high percentage of soccer players that are left-handed while being right-footed such as Ruud van Nistelrooy.
  • If a new subject needs to be added, please provide citation/reference. Do not add a subject merely because another websites list him/her as a left-handed people. Make sure you validate the subject with facts supported by sources like biography, photograph or painting.
  • If source is not accessible, add a brief description after the name to indicate what task does the subjects use their left hand.

Royalty and nobility

Political and governmental leaders

American

Other nationalities

Criminals

Artists

Authors

Musicians and composers

Actors

Honorable Mention: Right-handed actor Gary Cooper played left-handed athlete Lou Gehrig in the film The Pride of the Yankees. For scenes requiring him to bat left-handed, Cooper wore a Yankee uniform with Gehrig's number 4 mirror-reversed on his back. Cooper batted the ball right-handed, then ran to third base (not first). The film was then optically reversed, turning Cooper into a southpaw.

In 1953, while starring in a live television drama, right-handed actor Jack Lemmon decided to play his character left-handed, purely as an actor's exercise. Two years later, when Lemmon met James Cagney for the first time, Cagney's first words to Lemmon were "Are you still pretending you're left-handed?"

Film directors

Sportspeople

Baseball
Left-handedness is found in all sports but is particularly highly prized in baseball, among both hitters and pitchers. For hitters, the natural motion of swinging at a pitch gives a left-handed batter momentum running down the line to first. Left-handed batters typically also have a better view of the pitch thrown by a right-handed pitcher. Also, left-handers may have more room to hit if the first baseman is watching a runner on first, and some ball parks have short right-field fences, making it easier for left-handers to hit home runs. A left-handed batter runs a shorter distance to first base than a rightie, because he takes his stance in the batting box on the right side of home plate. Due to these advantages, some right-handed players will learn to hit left handed (these players are not considered left-handed.) Likewise, left-handed pitchers are valuable, in part because many left-handed sluggers have severe trouble hitting against left-handed pitchers. See left-handed specialist.

Position players

Pitchers

Basketball

Billiards and snooker

Bowling

Boxing

Cricket

In cricket, left-handed batsmen make bowlers bowl a completely different line (angle), which disrupts their accuracy. As batsmen in cricket work in pairs, teams traditionally like to have a mix of right and left handers to maximise this effect. This is particularly so for opening batsmen. The same arguments, in reverse, apply to left-handed bowlers. Top quality left-handed bowlers seem to be rarer than their batting equivalents.

Fencing

Figure-skating

Football (soccer)

American Football

Golf

  • Jerry Barber - Converted to right-handedness in childhood.
  • Bonnie Bryant
  • Sir Bob Charles
  • Russ Cochran "BBC - Get to grips with left-handed golf" — Famous left-handed golfers (retrieved June 8 2006)
  • Ben Hogan - Played right-handed, but was actually left-handed. When Hogan began his career, he was told that he should golf right-handed, with his left hand leading the swing; supposedly, this would enable him to benefit from the greater strength in his leading hand. If this were true, then all right-handed golfers should play left-handed! In his later years, Hogan remarked that his greatest regret about his career was that he had allowed himself to be talked into playing right-handed.
  • Bobby Jones- Played right handed, but was actually left handed.
  • Phil Mickelson - Plays left-handed, but is actually right-handed.
  • Johnny Miller - Left-handed, but played right-handed.
  • Nick Price - Left-handed, but plays right-handed
  • Mike Weir - Plays left-handed, but is actually right-handed.

Ice Hockey

Motor sport

Rugby Union

Tennis

Wrestling and professional wrestling

Other sports

Philosophers

Miscellaneous

Disputed left-handed people / Ambidextrous

The following list includes person’s handedness remains controversial/unknown and person who are ambidextrous. (If you want to move the following people to other section in this list, please first consult the List of famous left-handed people and provide appropreate source and reference. (e.g. biography, photograph, paintings, etc.))

  • Alexander the Great - disputed.
  • Melissa Sue Anderson - Possibly ambidextrous
  • Fatty Arbuckle - Ambidextrous. Could throw two custard pies simultaneously, one with each hand, with unerring accuracy.
  • Lord Baden-Powell - Ambidextrous
  • Billy the Kid - Often cited as left-handed, and is identified as such in "The Left-Handed Gun", a teleplay (and later a screenplay) by Gore Vidal. The evidence usually cited for this is a well-known photograph, in which Billy is holding his pistol in his left hand (the hand on the right, as seen by the viewer). However, the photograph is a "tintype", which mirror-reverses its image, thus Billy is actually holding the pistol in his right hand.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte – Claimed by some individuals and websites to be left-handed, but primary sources (e.g. biography, photograph, paintings) supports such claim is still yet to be found.
  • Charlemagne Claimed by some individuals and websites* to be left-handed, but primary sources (e.g. biography, photograph, paintings) supports such claim is still yet to be found.
  • Dick Van Dyke - Ambidextrous, uses his left hand to draw caricatures and cartoons.
  • Albert Einstein – Claimed by some individuals and websites to be left-handed, but photos show him writing on a blackboard with his right arm; and also, playing violin with his right arm (See discussion page.)
  • James A. Garfield - Was able to write Latin and Greek simultaneously, with one pen in each hand, but was left-handed by preference.
  • Barry Gibb - Ambidextrous*
  • Joan of Arc – She has been described as left-handed on very slim evidence. The only known surviving portrait of her which dates from her lifetime depicts her raising a sword in her left hand. However, this portrait is a crude sketch, and there is no reason to believe that the (unknown) artist ever actually saw her in person. We have no real evidence for Joan of Arc's left-handedness, and some circumstantial evidence against it. During the weeks of her imprisonment preceding her trial for witchcraft, she was watched intensively. If she had shown a preference for her left hand (the so-called "devil's hand"), this fact would almost certainly have been mentioned in the prosecution's testimony against her.
  • Jack the Ripper - Some doctors originally thought the wounds inflicted by this serial killer indicated a left-handed killer, though they were basing this idea on a frontal attack when he could have, as most authorities now believe, attacked from behind or from the side when the woman was already on the ground.
  • Helen Keller - disputed, she has been included on lefthanded people list on website such as * one, but evident (such as biographic or photographic source) is yet to be found.
  • R. Kelly - Has been seen using both (probably ambidextrous).**
  • King Louis XVI - he has been included on left-handed people list on some websites, but evident and source (such as biographic source or painting) is not provided.
  • Marilyn Monroe - evidence seems to find her right-handed, but what may be a myth still has strong believers *
  • Pablo Picasso – See discussion page.
  • Nas - Has been seen using both (probably ambidextrous).
  • Mark Twain – Some believe that he is left-handed, but some other believe that he was not ; and it is also an exaggeration to say that he could write with his left when he got tired with his right hand.
  • James Woods - Ambidextrous

References

See also

Lists of people

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "List of famous left-handed people".

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