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John Doe

name

Etymology

Books that documented and taught the legal profession in England were using the names John Smith, John Doe, Richard Roe, and others as generic placeholder names (for roles, such as plaintiff, defendant, petitioner, etc) by the mid-seventeenth century (perhaps earlier). Compare also Tommy Atkins. Though the rationale behind the choices of Doe and Roe is unknown, there are many suggested folk etymologies. Other fictitious names for a person involved in litigation in medieval English law were "John Noakes" (or "Nokes") and "John-a-Stiles" (or "John Stiles"). The Oxford English Dictionary states that John Doe is "the name given to the fictitious lessee of the plaintiff, in the (now obsolete in the UK) mixed action of ejectment, the fictitious defendant being called Richard Roe".

  1. derived from Dictionary states that John Doe is "the name given to the fictitious lessee of the plaintiff

Definitions

  1. A fictitious name used chiefly in legal documents for an unknown or anonymous, usually…

    A fictitious name used chiefly in legal documents for an unknown or anonymous, usually male, person.

    • i.e. "to Tom, Dick or Harry:" the names like John Doe and Richard Roe are used indefinitely in Arab.

  2. Any unknown or anonymous, usually male, person.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for John Doe. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA