Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 8, 1995                   TAG: 9506080018
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOEL ACHENBACH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FICTITIOUS NAMES WERE DEER TO THOSE WHO CREATED THEM

A: Because barristers hunted. That's the best guess here.

The term ``John Doe'' and the lesser known ``Richard Roe'' (which is still used by some lawyers) were invented in England several centuries ago. The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1768.

As you know, ``doe'' is a female deer (if you forget this, think of Julie Andrews singing ``Do-Re-Mi''). A ``roe'' is also a deer. A roe deer is a scrawny thing with funny antlers that lives in Europe and Asia.

So the barristers who invented the terms for describing unknown people in legal transactions were definitely deer-fixated. That's probably because they were of the social class that was out hunting all the time, says David Jost, senior lexicographer for the American Heritage Dictionary. You can imagine them standing around with falcons on their wrists, inventing new words.

The need for fictitious names in legal actions goes way back. The Romans referred to ``Titius'' and ``Seius.'' The British played around for a while with the name ``Goodtitle.'' That's it, just ``Goodtitle.'' Not even ``Lord Goodtitle'' or anything. We would have voted for something like ``Louie `the Nose' Goodtitle.''

The Mailbag:

Harold M. of Hialeah, Fla., writes, ``Would appreciate it if you could tell when and who developed the longitude and latitude formula.''

Dear Harold: How about we recast the question: Why does everyone agree that 0 degrees longitude is in Greenwich, England?

It turns out that there was a big vote in 1884. The International Meridian Conference met in Washington, D.C., and by a tally of 22 to 1 the participating nations approved the Royal Greenwich Observatory as the site of the prime meridian. (We are not sure who the 1 was but are guessing it was France.)

The 1884 vote was triggered by the railroads. Every town had its own time. Railroad schedules made no sense. So the prime meridian was established during a flurry of standardization.

They chose Greenwich because 70 percent of the world's shipping already used Greenwich as the prime meridian. The observatory, founded in 1675, had been devoted to solving the problem of longitude. It got a head start and no one could ever gain as much prestige in the longitude biz.

Latitude is easily discerned by sailors - you just look at the angle of the sun or the Pole Star above the horizon. The further north you go, for example, the higher the Pole Star is in the sky. So the latitude system has been understood since ancient times.

But longitude is a different kettle of fish. It can be thought of as a measurement of time. The Earth turns 360 degrees in 24 hours, or 15 degrees an hour. So if you know the time at the prime meridian, and know the time where you are at any given moment, you can calculate WHERE you are relative to Greenwich, England.

You might say that longitude is one of the last remnants of the British Empire.

- Washington Post Writers Group