h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a question of upmost importance: who is John Doe? I keep hearing about this guy and I want to know who the hell he is. He thinks he's so cool, well when I find out who he is.......

He is a young postal worker who makes 10.00 a week and he lives next door to me. He is very old and always picks his nose and smokes cigars. That is the John Doe which i know

A very old, young postal worker? I thought John Doe was unemployed...

I always understood he was dead. Permanently. And in numerous different unidentified personas, both simultaneously and consecutively.

John Doe is Jane Doe's husband. Dunno why she ever married him, I personaly have never seen him consious (or breathing for that matter). All he does is lay around all day and decay. Just don't know what she sees in him. Then again maybe she likes that because she does the same thing so they rot together.

But if John Doe just lays around to decay all day then why does everyone talk about him then? You don't see people talking about me all the time, do you?

I have just come across this item:

John-a-Nokes [John of the oaks] and Tom-a-Stiles [Tom of the stiles] ... two fictitious names commonly used in law procedings, but now very seldom, have for several years past been supplanted by two other honest, peaceable gentlemen, John Doe and Richard Roe.
- Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1811

So John Doe's origins go back to the 19th century, if not earlier. Maybe someone with legal experience can explain why men with fictitious names were needed, and how John Doe came to be associated almost exclusively with unidentified corpses (in the States, at any rate).

Gee, that was a bit more helpful! New question; why are they only guys? I guess that means us girls are not examples of bad people who disobey the law! Male corruption! Yeah! Buh huh huh huh huh...

I'm guessing here, but I think that most of the people involved in litigation before the mid to late-nineteenth century were men. Before then a woman's property became her husband's property when she married. The only women who owned property in their own right were unmarried or widows. Women did break the law (Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe illustrates this, and there are instances of female pirates) but these weren't the kind of cases where a fictitious name would be required in court. Consequently, fictitious female names weren't invented.

I thought that John Doe was the standard name given to unidentified dead men. Therefore Jane Doe is the name given to women.

We've already established the John/Jane Doe link to unidentified corpses. What we are now trying to establish is why. My findings indicate that 'John Doe' was in use long before anybody took much interest in unidentified corpses (see my last entry, which contains the date 1811), but I've been unable to find how the name made the transition.

Ack! This is really mind boggling! I really need to know! The suspense is killing me!

A corollary to this from Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable:

John Doe - At one time used in law pleadings for an hypothetical plaintiff; the suppositious defendant being "Richard Roe." These fictions are not now used.

My copy of Brewer's is a reprint of the 1894 edition (I think there are later editions), so we can establish that it was used much earlier that century.

Perhaps the name was kept to refer to dead people of unknown origins and endings for legal (or "forensic") purposes. They are hypothetical plaintiffs at least until cause of death can be nailed down (was it natural causes or otherwise).

Thank-you so much! The question was starting to really bug me!

I always assumed - and I might be wrong - that this was a corruption of DOA - Dead On Arrival, that is an unknown corpse. Jane DOA was a female version. Maybe someone who works in a morgue or mortuary in the US can comment - what do you guys call an unknown, pending identification?

Richard (my husband) thought it stood for Dead On Examination, as John Doe's are generally dead before they arrive wherever one is pronounced DOA. And the name John Doe has been around for long enough (about 200 years) for a 'corruption' theory to be unnecessary. The female equivalent is Jane DOE, not DOA.

I'm British, but as far as I'm aware Americans use the term John Doe for unidentified corpses. I've heard it on U.S. cop shows often enough. This sort of suggests that the phrase pre-dates the War of Independence, i.e. late eighteenth century, 'cos it must have been taken over there by English legal people.

John Doe is actually the founder of a hippy type commune in Forken Ford Farm, Edinburgh, Scotland, just beside 'the innocent railway'.

other members of the clan included :

Libby Doe

Jew Doe

Och Aye Doe

Lie Doe

Say Doe.

Alas, as far as I'm aware, they have now all split up to go their seperate ways, never to be heard from again.