"John/Jane Doe"--Why "Doe"?

[Mark A. Mandel]

"Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> pointed us to the worldwidewords.org
page on "John Doe". I noticed there the following sentence:

        >>>
(John as a generic name also appeared in John Company, a nickname for the
East India Company; much more recently, John Q Citizen and John Q Public are
American names for the man in the street, based on the same idea).
        <<<

I've always assumed that the "Q." in "John Q. Public" and "John Q. Citizen"
(the latter much less frequent in my experience than the former) came from
John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, always referred to
including the middle name (or at least initial)  to distinguish him from
John Adams, second President and father of John Q.

-- Mark A. Mandel
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]