J. Random

J. Random, followed by a term for a category of people, capitalized, to make an appearance of a personal name, is a placeholder name for an undistinguished, average person from the category, e.g., "J. Random Loser". The construct originated in hacker's culture and capitalizes on the specific meaning of the word "random" ("undistinguished", "arbitrary"), also popularized by hackers.

The most well-known J.R. is probably J. Random Hacker. As the Jargon File puts it:

"A mythical figure like the Unknown Soldier; the archetypal hacker nerd. This term is one of the oldest in the <hacker's> jargon, apparently going back to MIT in the 1960s. may originally have been inspired by ‘J. Fred Muggs’, a show-biz chimpanzee whose name was a household word back in the early days of TMRC, and was probably influenced by ‘J. Presper Eckert’ (one of the co-inventors of the electronic computer)".

Another well-known J.R. is J. Random (L)User.^[1]

See also

• John Q. Public
• Common man
• John Doe

References

1. ^ http://www.google.com/search?q=%22j+random+user%22+OR+%22J+random+luser%22

This article is based in part on the Jargon File, which is in the public domain.

External links

• Appendix B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker, from the Jargon File