A female deer, or in legal/official documents, a placeholder name used when the actual name is unknown (as in 'John Doe').
From Old English 'da' or 'do,' related to Germanic languages. The word has been used to describe female deer since before 1000 CE. In legal contexts, 'John Doe' and 'Jane Doe' became standard placeholders by the 1600s, possibly because they were common names at the time.
When law enforcement uses 'Jane Doe' for an unknown victim, they're actually using a tradition from medieval times when 'John Doe' was literally the most common name in England—so it became the go-to placeholder name!
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