John Doe

John Doe (male) and Jane Doe (female) are multiple-use placeholder names that are used in the British and American legal system and aside generally in the United Kingdom and the United States when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed.

[1][2][3] In the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are often used to refer to a corpse whose identity is unknown or cannot be confirmed.

In other English-speaking countries, unique placeholder names, numbers or codenames have become more often used in the context of police investigations.

This has included the United Kingdom, where usage of "John Doe" originated during the Middle Ages.

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 ...[11] This particular use became obsolete in the UK in 1852: As is well known, the device of involving real people as notional lessees and ejectors was used to enable freeholders to sue the real ejectors.

The first time this form of injunction was used since 1852 in the United Kingdom was in 2005 when lawyers acting for JK Rowling and her publishers obtained an interim order against an unidentified person who had offered to sell chapters of a stolen copy of an unpublished Harry Potter novel to the media.

The baby victim in a 2001 murder case in Kansas City, Missouri, was referred to as Precious Doe.

[15] In 2009, the New York Times reported the difficulties and unwanted attention experienced by a man actually named John Doe, who had often been suspected of using a pseudonym.

Less often, other surnames ending in -oe have been used when more than two unknown or unidentified persons are named in U.S. court proceedings, e.g., In Massachusetts, "Mary Moe" is used to refer to pregnant women under the age of 18 petitioning the Superior Court for a judicial bypass exception to the parental consent requirement for abortion.