Candidates

Using simple wordsearch plus the index of Gifford's collection of annotations, we can guesstimate the likeliest most-popular candidates:

wordcounts:

Bloom 718
Stephen 493
white 192
hat 167
Mulligan 160
pocket 141
black 134
horse 118
red 114
Mr Dedalus 107
Martin 106
boot 103
Lenehan 102


gifford index &c:

Shakespeare 200? incl quotes
alcohol
Molly (continually in bloom's thoughts)
Mulligan (almost never in bloom's thoughts)
hats (almost everybody's got one on outdoors)
Gospel of Matthew 90
Jesus 70 (should include gospels?)
Catholic Mass 60
Mary 55
Genesis 54
Gospel of John 50
tobacco
antisemitism 45
Yeats 41
Boylan (often unnamed)
Simon
Lenehan (keeps turning up)
Corny
Richie Goulding
Dante 40
Gospel of Luke 40
Exodus 38
Aristotle 36
Thomas Moore 35
Parnell 35
Elijah 30
Moses 30
Freemasons 29
Mozart 27
AE 25
Blake 25
Edward VII 23
Wilde 20
Swinburne 19
St Patrick 17
Throwaway 9

shaving, beards, moustaches


mixing motifs with characters and famous artists based on frequency of references may or may not be a good idea

big motifs: death, disease, money, love, Ireland, Church, marriage

most of the wandering rocks characters have only a few other cites


some more wordcounts, ignoring synonyms:

Bloom 718
Stephen 493
hat 167
Mulligan 160
pocket 141
horse 118
boot 103
Lenehan 102
Molly 71

Mr Dedalus 107
Martin 106
Boylan 72
Conmee 71
Haines 64
Simon 50
Blazes 36
key/s 42
shoe 35
Goulding 33
tower 33
potato 26

white 192
black 134
red 114
green 98
blue 82
grey 78
brown 60
yellow 51
violet 19
orange 14
rainbow 2