John Doe

Portuguese: Fulano de Tal (so and so) or just "fulano"

Another option is "Zé" or "Zé mané" (Zé is short for Jozé, Brazil's most common name).

I say Joe Public and Joan Public in the UK, the plural I use is The World and his wife.

"So and so" have different names in Spanish:

Fulano, Zutano, Mengano & Perengano, or
Fulana, Zutana, Mengana & Perengana, if they're female.

Funnily enough, the order is crucial. You don't say "Perengano y Mengano", but "Fulano y Zutano".

None of those names are for real people, of course.

There are names used that I cannot put on a family site like A2K

I imagine

Ola Normann for a man, Kari Normann for a woman. (Normann means Norwegian in Norwegian)

Hi, by the way! I just joined this site, and am currently checking for old friends and interesting postings.

Anneofnorway- Glad to see you here. Welcome!

How about "Tom, Dick or Harry"!

You are VERY WELCOME to A2K Anneofnorway.

In German it's "Otto Normalverbraucher", "Normalverbraucher" means "average consumer".

I'm sure someone will come along to dispute this, but there really is no equivalent in French. Anciently, all peasants were referred to as Jacques--and, in fact, referred to in the agregate as the Jacquerie. After the revolution, this was very much a no-no. Bonne was the name which had been applied to women, and les aristo claimed it simply meant "good (woman)"--but as it is also the word for a maid, as in a domestic servant, it did not survive in common usage after the revolution, not nationally at least.

I'm sure the modern French media have a term they use, and what i've delivered here is from a literary perspective. The female figure of Liberty is known as Marianne, and is considered the incarnate symbol of France--for much of her life Catherine Deneuve has been considered to be the living ideal of Marianne. I don't know to whom they currently give the palm on that one.

I would like to ask for a very minor diversion, and ask Fbaezer, and other knowledgeable persons here if other romance languages have an equivalent to this: when in context, it is obvious that person is referred to, then the word or name changes, either meaning or spelling. For example, Frederick II of Prussia referred to La Marquise de Pompador as Jeanne Poisson, or "Joan Fish," and insult referring to her lowly origins. But appending the word for fish (poisson) to someones name automatically changes the meaning, here it would be "Joan, the Fishwife," or "Joan, the Fishmonger." As well, a corruption of the old French word for red yields roux, rousse in the feminine--so that LeRoux means the red-headed man, and LaRousse means the red-headed woman. Finally, any man's family name which is feminized means his wife--Dr. Guillotin invented what he considered a more human way of execution, and the mob promptly named it La Guillotine, meaning the wife of Dr. Guillotin. So, is there equivalent usage in other romance languages?

Legal substitute for John Doe/Jane Roe in Russian is "imyarek", literally meaning "some person of any gender whose name is insignificant", but such a term is used only in legal practice. Popular terms for John Doe/Jane Roe are "Ivan Petrov" for a male, and "Maria Ivanova" for a female (well, those are widely spread first and last names in Russia).

setanta, could you be more specific?

I know that, in Spanish and Italian, wives names are not a feminization of the husband's.
It would be "la señora Martínez" or "la signora Rossi", non "la Martineza" or "la Rossa". (If you said "la Martínez" it would be despective; "la Rossi" is accepted, since her husband would be "il Rossi").
Besides, in both cultures, most women under 50 tend to use now their maiden surnames all the time.

Ah, well, what i am referring to is the habit of "peasants," by which i only mean the majority of the population, and not a pejorative, to have altered such a name. Thus, the plains of Abraham adjoining Quebec are named for Abraham Martin--the locals would have called his wife, with a non-insulting familiarity--La Martine. The French language has played much with gender in it's history. The plays of the "classic" playwrites such as Racine and Corneille have been written in "Alexandrine," twelve strophes to the line--and rhymes are considered poor (only the last phonemes of the rhymed pair of words matches), sufficient (the last two phonemes match) or rich (the last three phonemes match), so that an author would tend to use feminine words, or to feminize words, so as to acheive the most matching phonemes in a rhymed pair. But more than this, there is a tendancy in french to feminize words, and also to expand the vocabulary by having an otherwise non-existent human conotation--as in the example above, with poisson. Thus, Dénis Poisson, "Dennis Fish," would actually be more properly, "Dennis the Fishmonger." In all of this, i once again add the caveat that this does not necessarily apply to contemporary French, which is breaking free from the rigidity imposed by more than three centuries of l'Académie, and is now changing more rapidly than it has done in more than a thousand years.

Hey
Hello, I am new. I am mexican and speak japanese.
so, the equivalent in japanese would be

NANINANI SAN

it literally would mean Mr. Anything

ahh so desuka?

Good morning Anneofnorway and welcome. Of course, morning is more advanced over there. I've spent some time in Sweden and I suspect Norway is a six hour difference.

¡Quihubo NekonoPaw!.
You're very welcome, y también muy bienvenido, a Able2know.