Placeholder name
Placeholder names are words that can refer to objects or people whose names do not exist, are temporarily forgotten, irrelevant, or unknown in the context in which they are being discussed.
Linguistic role
These placeholders typically function grammatically as nouns and can be used for people, objects, locations, or places. They share a property with pronouns, because their referents must be supplied by context; but, unlike a pronoun, they may be used with no referent—the important part of the communication is not the thing nominally referred to by the placeholder, but the context in which the placeholder occurs.In their Dictionary of American Slang, Stuart Berg Flexner and Harold Wentworth use the term kadigan for placeholder words. They define "kadigan" as a synonym for thingamajig. The term may have originated with Willard R. Espy, though others, such as David Annis, also used it in their writing. Its etymology is obscure—Flexner and Wentworth related it to the generic word gin for engine. It may also relate to the Irish surname Cadigan. Hypernyms may also be used in this function of a placeholder, but they are not considered to be kadigans.
Examples
Placeholder words exist in a highly informal register of the English language. In formal speech and writing, words like accessory, paraphernalia, artifact, instrument, or utensil are preferred; these words serve substantially the same function, but differ in connotation.Most of these words can be documented in at least the 19th century. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a short story entitled "The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq"., showing that particular form to be in familiar use in the United States in the 1840s. In Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, W. S. Gilbert makes the Lord High Executioner sing of a "little list" which includes:
... apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind,
Such as: What d'ye call him: Thing'em-bob, and likewise: Never-mind,
and 'St: 'st: 'st: and What's-his-name, and also You-know-who:
The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you.
Some fields have their own specific placeholder terminology. For example, "widget" in economics, engineering and electronics, or "Blackacre" and "John Doe" or "Jane Doe" in law. "X-ray" was originally a placeholder name for an unexplained phenomenon.
Companies and organizations
- "Ace" and "Acme" were popular in company names as positioning words in alphabetical directories. They were generic, laudatory of whatever products they were used to promote and appeared at the beginning of most alpha-sorted lists. The Acme Corporation of cartoon fame is one placeholder example.
- "Mom and Pop" are occasional placeholders for the individual owners of a generic small family-owned business
- High Street or Main Street for the business district of a small town or village, often contrasted as a commercial business entity against Threadneedle Street, City of London in the UK or Wall Street, New York City in America.
- "Advent corporation" is a term used by lawyers to describe an as yet unnamed corporation, while legal incorporation documents are being prepared. In the case of Advent Corporation, founder Henry Kloss decided to adopt this placeholder name as the formal legal name of his new company.
- "NewCo" or "Newco" is used in a similar way in the UK for an as-yet-unnamed company.
- Fictional brands such as Morley are often used in television and cinema as placeholders to avoid unintended product placement. "Brand X" has been used in television advertisements as a generic brand representing any other brand than the one being advertised.
- "XYZ Widget Company" has long been used in business and economics textbooks as a sample company. Also used as engraving text example on items such as plaques, trophy plates, etc. Occasionally appears on customizable promotional materials including stationery templates, business cards, advertising signage, cups, backpacks, and other "swag" samples.
- "Contoso" is used as a fictional business in Microsoft's training materials.
- "Oceanic Airlines" is used as a fictional airline in several films, TV programmes, and comic books, typically when it is involved in a disaster or another event with which actual airlines would prefer not to be associated.
Computing
- Foo, Bar, Baz, and Qux are commonly used as placeholders for file, function and variable names. Foo and bar are derived from foobar.
- Hacker slang includes a number of placeholders, such as which may stand for any small piece of equipment. To frob, likewise, means to do something to something. In practice it means to adjust in an aimless way.
- Alice and Bob, alternatives for 'Person A'/'Person B' when describing processes in telecommunications; in cryptography Eve is also added.
- J. Random X is a term used in computer jargon for a randomly selected member of a set, such as the set of all users. Sometimes used as J. Random Loser for any not-very-computer-literate user.
- Johnny/Jane Appleseed, commonly used as a placeholder name by Apple.
Domain names
Geographical locations
Placeholders such as Main Street, Your County, and Anytown are often used in sample mailing addresses. Ruritania is commonly used as a placeholder country.Something-stan, where something is often profanity, is commonly used as a placeholder for a Middle Eastern or South Asian country or for a politically disliked portion of one's own country. Example - Carjackastan
Timbuktu, which is also a real city, is often used to mean a place that is far away, in the middle of nowhere, and/or exotic.
Podunk is used in American English for a hypothetical small town regarded as typically dull or insignificant, a place that you have likely never heard of, though still in the United States. Another example is East Cupcake to refer to a generic small town in the Midwestern United States.
Similarly, the boondocks or the boonies are used in American English to refer to very rural areas without many inhabitants.
In New Zealand English, Woop Woops is a name for an out-of-the-way location, usually rural and sparsely populated. The similar Australian English Woop Woop, can refer to any remote location, or outback town or district. Another New Zealand English term with a similar use is Waikikamukau, a generic name for a small rural town.
In British English, Bongo Bongo Land is a pejorative term used to refer to Third World countries, particularly in Africa, or to a fictional such country.
Legal
- In ancient Roman law, the names Aulus Agerius and Numerius Negidius were used to represent the plaintiff and the defendant. The names were both wordplays, respectively meaning "I set in motion" and "I refuse to pay". The model instruction to judges for civil suits began with si paret Numerium Negidium Aulo Agerio sestertium decem milia dare oportere, meaning "if it appears that Numerius Negidius ought to pay Aulus Agerius ten thousand sesterces...".
- In the United States and Canada, John Doe and the variations Jane Doe and John Roe or Richard Roe : used in legal action and cases when the true identity of a person is unknown or must be withheld for legal reasons. Jane Roe was used for the then-unidentified plaintiff in one of the most famous legal cases in United States history, Roe v. Wade. These parties also appear in the legal fictions of the action in ejectment, which was the usual proceeding to quiet title to real property under common law pleading.
- Mopery: used in informal legal discussions as a placeholder for some infraction, when the exact nature of the infraction is not important.
- Blackacre and its neighbors Whiteacre, Greenacre, Brownacre, Greyacre, Pinkacre, etc. are used as placeholders for parcels of real property, usually on Law School examinations and the several State Bar Exams. They are sometimes located in Acre County in the fictional State of Franklin.
- Fnu Lnu is used by authorities to identify unknown suspects, the name being an acronym for First Name Unknown, Last Name Unknown. If a person's first name is known but not the last, they may be called "John Lnu" or "Fnu Doe", and an unidentified person may be "Fnu Lnu". For example, a former interpreter for the United States military was charged as "FNU LNU", and a mute man whose identity could not be determined was arrested and charged with burglary in Harris County, Texas under the name "FNU-LNU". Fnu-Lnu conjunctions may also be used if the person has only a single name, as in Indonesian names. The name has been considered a source of humor when "Fnu Lnu" has been mistaken for the actual name of a person.
Medicine
- St. Elsewhere is often used as a placeholder name for any regional hospital or other care facility from which an admitted patient was referred. The medical slang is honored in the name of the 1980s television show of the same name.
- GOMER is a name in medical slang for any patient who continually uses emergency room services for non-emergency conditions; its use is informal and pejorative.
- Element names from the periodic table are used in some hospitals as a placeholder for patient names, ex. Francium Male.
Military
- Tommy Atkins, the generic name for a soldier of the British Army. Also, colloquially, Bill Oddie, rhyming slang on the nickname 'squaddie'.
- In the US Army and Air Force, Private Tentpeg and Snuffy are commonly used in examples or cautionary tales. In the Marine Corps, Lance Corporal Schmuckatelli serves the same purpose.
- In the US Coast Guard, a generic Coast Guardsman is referred to as Joe Coastie.
- In the Coast Guard, Navy, and Marines, a hypothetical member who has his act together is A.J. Squared-Away.
- In the Canadian Armed Forces, the generic name for a soldier is Private/Corporal/rank Bloggins
Numbers
- Umpteen is any annoyingly large number, as in the phrase "for the umpteenth time".
- Placeholder telephone numbers are often allocated from ranges such as 555 to avoid generating misdialled calls to working numbers. In the United Kingdom, Ofcom has set aside a range of numbers in larger geographic area codes, as well as fictional area code 01632, for dramatic use.
- Common placeholders for postcodes in Canada include A1A 1A1 and K1A 0B2. H0H 0H0 is reserved by Canada Post for fictional use. In the United States, the ZIP Code 90210 is frequently used. Numeric codes with repeated or sequential digits like 12345, or 99999-9999 may also appear. 00000, which lies in an unused prefix range, can be used without confusion.
- In computing, some magic numbers apply hexspeak to create memorable hexadecimal values.
People
- Joe Bloggs
- John/Jane Doe
- Joe Schmoe
- Tom, Dick and Harry
Spoken and written language
- Lorem ipsum: Simulated text used to fill in for written content in a page layout design