Pinky, I was pondering on the words 'foo','bar' and 'baz', and it occured to me... Where did these come from? Is it an american thing?

BBQ, in 2023 I'd say 'baz' is a New Zealand/England thing -- the 'baz' in Bazball is the nickname of legendary NZ cricketer Brendon McCullum who recently became England's head cricket coach:

The new attacking, positive intention approach, instigated by McCullum and captain Ben Stokes was labelled Bazball by Andrew Miller, the UK editor of ESPNcricinfo, after McCullum's Baz nickname. The phrase picked up increasing use across the wider media.

The bazball meme recently trended on social media, spawning many imitations ... such as CumBall for Australia's cricket captain Pat Cummins (as in the headline "CumBall beats BazBall") ... and BodBall (for Bod) and EyeBall (for me) in EyeBall stumps BodBall here at PM.

BBQ, if you were still active here at PM, I'd call you BbqBall. :)

Updated: minor changes to wording