What does なんたらという mean?


What does なんたらという mean? I searched なんたら's meaning and it showed. The following

  * oojah 
  * oojahkapiv 
  * oojamaflip 
  * oojar 
  * oojiboo

I used eow.alc.co.jp to search.
<http://eow.alc.co.jp/%E3%81%AA%E3%82%93%E3%81%9F%E3%82%89/UTF-8/> What do
this mean? Is this a japanese only word?




I suspect this is a type of [metasyntactic
variable](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variable), a word which
stands in for an unknown word. I don't know why those examples were chosen,
but more common metasyntactic variables in my idiolect are 'whatchamacallit',
'doodad', 'thingummy' etc.




I suspect this is a type of [metasyntactic
variable](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variable), a word which
stands in for an unknown word. I don't know why those examples were chosen,
but more common metasyntactic variables in my idiolect are 'whatchamacallit',
'doodad', 'thingummy' etc.

