this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
29 points (91.4% liked)
Asklemmy
43913 readers
1510 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Germany uses Max/Erika Mustermann – literally Sampleman. It's used for example on official sample pictures of our IDs. Some authorities in Berlin have startet to use the gender neutral name Manu Mustermann.
That's the official version, but at least when I talk about some average dude it's way too long and artificial, I don't think the name Mustermann actually exists.
When I think of the most common name to use in casual conversation, I'd probably go for Müller (maybe Peter? Though the first name is probably heavily generation-dependent).
In older publication you may alse find references to "der deutsche Michel" (the german Michel, short for Michael) as a somewhat condescending reference to the average citizen who is very hesitant to adopt new concepts and tech and not always able or willing to understand complex concepts. Often used to remark that a product/idea will not have a chance on the market because "der deutsche Michel" doesn't see the pointor would never pick it up.
Haven't seen that in a while though, I guess Germans have become more open to new stuff :)
Oh that is interesting. In the US (at least, maybe other English dominant places have this too, but I don’t know) we have “the average Joe” to describe this same kind of person.