Fnu Lnu

Fnu Lnu (sometimes pronounced as ) is a pseudonym used in law enforcement to indicate that a person's name is not known. The origin of the name is the acronym First Name Unknown, Last Name Unknown. In the situation where only the first name or last name is known, variants such as "Deepak Lnu" or "Fnu Smith" are used. Another situation where this might happen is for persons with only single-word names such as Indonesian names where most of them either were assigned FNU (or Fnu) as their first names or LNU (or Lnu) as their last names (the third possibility is using reduplication, e.g. John John or Mery Mery).

As an example of this pseudonym's use, a former contract interpreter for the United States military was charged in 2005 with lying to federal agents in his application for naturalization and application for a security clearance. The man was accused of providing an inaccurate name, birthdate, country of origin, and marital status. The complaint stated that "'he defendant's true identity is unknown'" and he was charged as "FNU LNU". Similarly, in 1991, a mute man whose identity could not be determined was arrested and charged with burglary in Harris County, Texas under the name "FNU-LNU"; charges were later dropped because authorities could not communicate with the man.

The name has been considered a source of humor when "Fnu Lnu" has been mistaken for the actual name of a person. One anecdote tells of an assistant district attorney who tried to look up the previous record of a person identified as "Fnu Lnu" and is surprised to find pages and pages of persons by that name, only to later be embarrassed to learn that the name means "first name unknown, last name unknown".

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