World Wide Words logo   Q From Sharon Warne: Why do we Americans
call bathrooms johns?  A An interesting question. I wish we had
a good answer. All I can do is provide you with some pointers.
It was at one time common to address any man whose name one
didn’t know as John, particularly a servant (much like a
Glaswegian will use Jimmy today, and others will use Jack).
There are dozens of expressions recorded that contain John as a
generalised name, such as John Thomson’s Man for an uxorious
husband, Johnnny Foreigner for anyone from outside Britain, John
Trot for a bumpkin, John Tuck for a Chinese mandarin, and John
Barleycorn, the personification of the barley from which whisky
is made.  And there is John Thomas as a slang term for the
penis; this is known in print since the 1870s, but since it was
rude it had probably been in circulation for a time before
anyone wrote it down (there’s a story that there was a real John
Thomas about 1400 who was extremely well-endowed, but it seems
to be just a legend; it’s m