Who was John Doe? A History of the Generic Name – Rewind

We’re all familiar with the use of “John Doe” or “Jane Doe” as a placeholder name or when an identity is unknown. But where did the name come from? This week, we do a deep dive into the history of John Doe and find out who he really was – then do a quick quiz with podcaster Wize Otero! 

Bonus content is available on patreon.com/michaelkent

In the Pima County Cemetery in Tuscon, Arizona, four small gravestones marked a single grave of four unknown people. They were labeled John Doe and Jane Doe, followed by a number. One of the four was labeled Jane Doe 19. It was the body of a woman who had been found by a homeless man in a culvert in the nearby suburb of Marana in 1987. The medical examiner deduced the height, weight, approximate age and manner of death of the person.  She had been shot 5 times with a .22 caliber firearm. The police tried to identify the victim, even releasing details to the public, but every time they had a match, it was excluded based on characteristics that didn’t match. After 2 years of trying, she was buried as Jane Doe 19 in 1989. Her grave site remained that way for 27 years, until the Aunt and Uncle of a teenage girl named Deanna Criswell learned that she had been missing. Her father had ben long estranged from the family and had reconnected with them. His daughter, a frequent runaway, had been missing and the rest of the family was just now learning about it. As it was now 2014, there was better science to match unknown decedents to missing person cases and they used facial recognition from the remains along with DNA. This info had been stored in the database of the Doe Network, a non-profit organization that helps identify missing persons. They compared the DNA with that of family members and found that it was a match. February 11, 2015, 27 years after she died, the small stone was changed from Jane Doe 19 to Deanna L. Criswell. 

We hear the name “Jane Doe” or “John Doe” and instantly know that it means one of a few possibilities. It could be a placeholder to represent a hypothetical generic person, it could be used in situations in which someone wishes or needs to remain anonymous, or it could be used to identify someone whose identity is unknown – whether they are living or not.

And the names are OLD. We know they’re at least 187 years old because of an old English song which ridicules them: 

Two giants live in Britain’s land,

John Doe and Richard Roe,

Who always travel hand in hand,

John Doe and Richard Roe.

Their fee-faw-fum’s an ancient plan

To smell the purse of an Englishman,

And, ‘ecod, they’ll suck it all they can,

John Doe and Richard Roe …

I don’t know what ‘ecod means. Maybe someone can write in and tell me. So those lyrics were from 1834. But it goes back even further than that. The reason those were terms in England in that time was due to the British legal system. In land disputes, John Doe and Richard Roe were written into British Law for the sake of arguing the case. John Doe would be used as a fictitious landowner when the landowner wasn’t known. Richard Roe was used as a fictitious defendant in those cases. Those terms were commonly used to argue property disputes until 1833. 

With that said, the term “John Doe” still exists in the British legal system because it’s used in what’s called a “John Doe Order” or “John Doe Injunction.” These are for when an unknown person has confidential information and is threatening to disclose it.

So the meaning of John Doe as a generic placeholder name was in use well before 1833 in Britain, but where did it come from? 

It’s a really difficult task to find exactly where John Doe comes from. We know that John Doe and Richard Roe were used to settle land disputes in England. And that use could possibly date back to as early as King Edward the third. So now we’re talking about the 14th century. Around the internet, there are multiple citations of John Doe and Richard Roe being used during King Edward the third’s reign – which was 1327-1377, but I’ve yet to see a source or reason for that. What I did find a source for was a 1642 Latin document which uses John Doo and Richard Roo which is describing a monetary dispute about 24 pounds.

This still doesn’t explain where they came from. We know that John and Richard were very common names at the time. And Roe and Doe (or Roo and Doo) match. They could have been the surnames of someone the lawyer knew. They could have been named after animals. Doe and Roe are both terms to describe deer – though I don’t know they would have been called Doo and Roo. That would have screwed up that Sound of Music song. Doo a deer a female deer.

As far as Jane Doe – it’s just the female version of John Doe and came much later. Jane was chosen because it sounds like John and clearly represents a female.

Unfortunately, we just don’t know. Experts don’t know why those two names were picked. But the idea of using a placeholder name didn’t start with ole’ John and Richard. Medieval English law used John Noakes. N-O-A-K-E-S or John Stiles to mean the same thing. Even ancient Rome had generic name placeholders. They used “Numerius Negidius” and “Aulus Agerius.” Those are names that literally translate to “I refuse to pay” and “I set in motion” for a defendant and a plaintiff. For this reason, we sometimes see the initials “N.N.” used when an identity is unknown. 

Here in America, we’re all familiar with one very common use of the name Roe. In 1969 Norma McCorvey became pregnant with her third child in Texas and wished to have an abortion. The legal case that became her fight for that right protected her identity and she became immortalized as Jane Roe in the historic legal case of Roe v Wade. So from what we’ve learned, we now know that term Roe in Roe v. Wade possibly dates back to settling land disputes in 14th Century England. 

I wish that I could give a more definitive answer as to why those two names were chosen, but as much as language changes over time, I think it’s fascinating that the original meaning of John Doe has barely changed. When we use that term, we could be using a term that a lawyer came up with randomly one day in the 1300s. 

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