In contemporary American English, what do you call a person you’ve temporarily forgotten the name of? Let’s suppose the following scenario. What would you use to fill in the blank?
Bill: Hey, Jack, do you remember our high school days?
Jack: Yea, Bill. Those were the days.
Bill: We have a lot of memories together.
Jack: Heh—do you remember last year's math teacher? Mr. umm. . . you say his name. . . shoot, I cannot remember his name. . . Mr. ____________ . . . Aha! Mr. Smith.
- doodah
- thingy
My guess is that only option 1 works here.
Is there any other common choice for this concept in AmE? I need to know the most common one.
Best Answer
I think your examples would be understandable to contemporary speakers of AmE, but they are usually reserved for objects with forgotten identities. That being said, comments and synonyms of the terms below have shown me that there is a lot of carryover from object name placeholders to those for people. This is probably due to the fact that the person’s name itself could function as the forgotten object.
Some commonly used alternatives are:
All of these are informal, and can be humorous in the right context.
As for which is the most common, my guess would be what’s-his-face—based solely on my own experience. This is also the least formal option on the list, so maybe it makes sense that I would hear it more than the others during the informal conversations that permeate my informal American life.