Jens Jensen in Denmark. Or Hans Hansen. I did actually know a guy once named Jørgen Jørgensen…
The generic name used in Norway is Ola Nordmann for a man and Kari Nordmann for a woman - but “Nordmann” actually means “Norwegian”, so these are more the equivalent of John Q. Public than John Smith. For the John Smith equivalent, take the same first names and stick them in front of Johanssen, the most common family name in the country.
Nguyen Van Kien (male)
Tran Thi Kim Hoa (female)
Actually, a lot of Vietnamese names would fall into this category, as they don’t have a very big pool of them (though there are some rarer ones).
I just posted without seeing yours.
I think Nguyen is the most common surname, but there are some serious contenders for second place, such as Tran, Ho, Ngo, etc. Tran is probably #2.
There’s a whole lot of cultural politics tied up in all this too, as a lot of the Vietnamese names are translations of Chinese ones (so “Ngo” is from the Chinese “Ng”, and “Lam” is also Chinese). This is a good or bad thing depending on what side you’re on (there’s some historical tension there).
In Egypt the last names are often the same as first names, and (regardless of your gender) you take your dad’s first name as your middle name. So take common Egyptian/Arabic names - Mohammed, Ahmed, Omar, Rashid, Sherif, Wahid, Adham, Walid, Hosni, Abdu, Abdul, Kamel, Gamal, Mustafa, Ragab all come to my mind immediately - mix 'em up any way you want, and there are probably a bunch of Egyptian men with that name. For example, I lived on Mostafa Kamel street, and the real estate agent who helped us find our apartment was also Mostafa Kamel.
astorian, Juan Ferrer is Catalan and would be a Joan; you left out Juan Herrero and Juan Herreros 
In Spain we used to say “Juan Español” to indicate “your average Spaniard.” I think the lastname Español (Spaniard) doesn’t even exist.
Patronimics are very common (Martínez, García, Sánchez, Sanz…) but “a Rodríguez” is a man who’s stayed in town while his family goes on vacation, so you won’t see “Paco Rodríguez” used as a “John Smith” kind of name. Paco (Frank) and Pepe (Joe) are commonly used as the “John” part of “John Smith.”
In the Basque country, the firstname used would likely be Antxón (Tony) or Patxi (Frank again); the lastname would be something long and convoluted, because although the most common Basque lastnames (Ochoa or Arregui, for example) aren’t that long, we do have some darn long ones and those are the ones that stick in people’s minds. For example, Larrameindíagoikoextea…
Is Schmidt really the “everyman” name in Germany? I’ll admit I only took three years, but a lot of things I read used “Zimmerman” as the generic. The first name was usually Jens or Hans (occasionally Johannes/Johan but that was more with classical composer jokes). “Hans Zimmerman” always seemed like the generic name to me.
Missed edit:
Looking around, it appears Müller, Mustermann (sample man) and things that literally mean some type of “everyman” are used more.
Wikipedia also seems to have a list of “John Doe” equivalents in other languages now that I look, which backs up the “Mustermann” thing.
Hi all.First post as a Newbie.Here is a snippet from Wikidictionary concerning Chinese surnames.
吴 / 吳 (Wú) is the 10th most common Chinese surname in the 2006 List of common Chinese surnames, but used to be the 8th most common in 1990.
No. As **Alessan **already mentioned – Avi Cohen (I’m pretty sure this is, in fact, the actual “most common” firstname/lastname combo. And *Cohen *is definitely the most common last name.)
For a “generic” name, you often see something like “Yisrael Yisraeli”* being used where “John Doe” or “John Smith” may be used in English – although there really aren’t all that many of them! (Just as I suspect there aren’t that many “John Doe”-s in the English speaking world, actually…) The “stereotypical” cartoon character popularized by Dosh to signify “The Typical Israeli” was named “Srulik,” which is a nickname for “Yisrael”
- Which is sort of like naming a “generic” Londoner “Britt England”
“Fred Bloggs” was a very common one when I was growing up- “Joe Bloggs” was another one that often appeared too.
the generic swede is called medelsvensson, which could be translated as “average joe”.
medel means average and svensson is a common surname in swedish (son of sven - sven’s son)
I am would sure that in most Chinese communities is Mr. Tan
Given that
- Tan is the most common surname ever
- In the hanyu representation, lots of Chinese surnames translates to Tan.
While Ferrari is indeed a very common surname in Italy, the third in frequency if I recall correctly, the most common one in Italy is Rossi, that means Red (as in red-haired), which is funny because there are so few natural red heads here. The most common name, the equivalent of John Smith, is Mario Rossi.
The average everyman is called il Signor Rossi, Mr Rossi.
Everyman in Japan is Tanaka-san. His first name isn’t usually mentioned, but if he did, he might be Taro Tanaka.
Working in the software biz, it seems like 80% of Indian names are the same 5 or 6 ones, usually something like Sanjay Gupta, Ram Kumar, Tanya Subramanian. The other 20% appear to be randomly generated 64-character strings containing one space.
In Poland everyman is called either Jan Kowalski or Jan Nowak.
Fair enough- problem for me is, in America, the traditional Spanish rules went out the window. “Juan Ferrer” might be unheard of in Spain itself, but in Mexico or Puerto Rico or among Hispanic-Americans today, combinations that sound unnatural to a Spaniard are not unusual.
>Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov
In Russian, isn’t the last name Pavlov more common? I heard (while studying Russian in the late 70s) that Russian telephone directories do not even list names as common as Ivan Pavlov, because there would be page after page of them. IIRC names are less numerous and more shared in Russian than in the English-speaking west. And, IIRC, the patronymic wouldn’t be used in typical lists of names, in the same way that the name Jonathan “John” Smith would typically be listed without the nickname “John” included. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong!
It’s odd you would say this, because among the Indians I know there is little overlap in names. There is a huge number of names for Indians to choose from, especially considering that (1) Almost any Sanskrit word can be repurposed into a name, and (2) New Sanskrit words are easily created. (Not that all or even most Indian names are Sanskrit, necessarily, but that’s just one factor.)
The problem with trying to find a “generic” Indian name is that most names will act as ethnic or sectarian markers of some kind.
If you meet a “Sanjay Gupta” you can be about 90 percent certain he’s a Bengali.
“Ram Kumar” – well technically, he could be from anywhere in the north, but he’s definitely not South Indian, and he’s probably from north central India.
“Tanya” isn’t really an Indian name at all, although a lot of Indians do have it. It’s like an Irish person named Giuseppe or a Russian named Francoise.
“Subramanian” is definitely a South Indian, so it can’t be an everyman name.
And you can be certain that all of these people are Hindus.
Then those 20 percent are almost certainly South Indian. Although, if you look closely, they’re not so random. There will be a fairly regular alternation between vowels and consonants and if you are familiar with Indian names, you’ll usually be able to split them up into familiar components, as if they were something like Matthewmarklukejohnian.
Oh, and there’s a good chance that “Ram Kumar” is hiding his real family name from you, like Ravi Shankar and Kishore Kumar did.