Erika Mustermann - Hebrew

Hebrew

In Hebrew, the word זה (zeh, meaning 'this') is a placeholder for any noun. The most popular personal name placeholders are מה-שמו (mah-shmo, 'whatsisname'), מֹשֶׁה (Moshe = Moses) and יוֹסִי (Yossi, diminutive form of Joseph) for first name, and כֹהֵן (Cohen, the most popular last name in Israel) for last name. However, in ID and credit card samples, the usual name is Israel Israeli for a man and Israela Israeli for a woman (these are actual first and last names) – similar to John and Jane Doe. It's also common in Hebrew slang to refer to a person's family members, mostly female ones, for example in sexual connotation (אמא שלך ima shelcha 'your mother'; אחותך achotcha 'your sister').

The traditional terms are Ploni פלוני and his party Almoni אלמוני (originally mentioned in Ruth 4:1). Ploni Almoni also is in modern official usage; for example, addressing guidelines by Israel postal authorities utilize Ploni Almoni as the addressee.

A vulgar term for an unspecified place, mostly popular in the Israeli army, is פִיזְדֶלוֹך (pizdelokh, formed from Russian pizda 'pussy' and German/Yiddish Loch 'hole'). Also quite common is תיז (א)נביא (Tiz (e) Nabi “the prophet’s ass”, from Arabic), עזאזל (Azazel, originally the name of a demon), and again Timbuktu.

A placeholder for a time in the far past is תרפפ"ו (pronounced Tarapapu, which somewhat resembles a year in the Hebrew calendar but is not quite one). A snappish remark when someone is asked for the time would be רבע לתיק תק (Reva letik tak, 'a quarter to tick-tack', tick-tack being a synecdoche for a clock).

Especially older Ashkenazi often employ the Yiddish placeholders Chaim Yankel and Moishe Zugmir ("zugmir" meaning "tell me" in Yiddish). Buzaglo (a typical Moroccan-Jewish last name) is a placeholder for a simple lower-class citizen. The term Buzaglo test was coined by then-Attorney General Aharon Barak in the 1970s for the proposition that the law should apply with equal leniency (or severity) to a senior public official and to the simplest ordinary citizen.

The suffix –shehu is analogous to the English prefix some–, in forming an unknown from any question word: ma ('what') → mashehu ('something'); mi ('who') → mishehu ('someone'); eyfo ('where') → eyfoshehu ('somewhere').