"Joe Bloggs" and "Fred Bloggs" are
placeholder names used primarily in the United Kingdom to represent the average man on the street. It is used by students, on standardized test preparation courses, to represent the average test-taker. Many countries, such as the United States, Germany or South Africa, use their own unique placeholder names, some even used tongue in cheek. Sometimes the name will be useful as a quick alternative, or stalling mechanism especially when used in conjunction with "What's'isname?" and "'Im down the street", when a forgotten name sits on the
tip of the tongue.
Examples
In
The Princeton Review standardized test
A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a predete ...
preparation courses, "Joe Bloggs" represents the average test-taker, and students are trained to identify the "Joe Bloggs answer", or the choice which seems right but may be misleading on harder questions.
"Joe Bloggs" was a brand name for a clothing range, especially
baggy jeans
Wide-leg jeans, colloquially called baggy pants, are a style of clothing that were popular from the early 1990s to the early 2010s. The quintessential brand of " hip-hop"-style wide-leg jeans comes from the Los Angeles–based JNCO ("Judge None ...
, which was closely associated with the
Madchester scene of the 1990s.
History
The name ''Bloggs'' is believed to have been derived from the
East Anglia
East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...
n region of Britain,
Norfolk or
Suffolk
Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...
, deriving from ''bloc'', a bloke. In the UK, a "
bloke" represents the average man on the street.
Similar cases
In the United Kingdom and United States,
John has historically been one of the most common male
first names, and
Smith is the
most common surname in each, so "John Smith" is a recurrent
pseudonym and placeholder name in those countries (especially in legal contexts).
Other placeholders, often used in advertising store cards and credit cards, are Mr/Mrs A Smith or
A. N. Other A. N. Other is used as a placeholder name or, less commonly, a pseudonym used by a person wishing to remain anonymous. It is most used in the United Kingdom, often written as AN Other. Occasionally it may be abbreviated to ANO, or—in cases wh ...
.
See also
*
List of placeholder names by language
This is a list of placeholder names (words that can refer to things, persons, places, numbers and other concepts whose names are temporarily forgotten, irrelevant, or unknown in the context in which they are being discussed) in various languages. ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bloggs, Joe
Common law
Legal fictions
Placeholder names
sv:Medelsvensson