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Chiefly humorous, and apparently an arbitrary formation, the Australian and New-Zealand noun Kafoops (also Cafoops, Kerfoops, etc.) is used as a surname for a non-specific or hypothetical person, or a person whose name is unknown, forgotten or withheld.
As Mrs Kafoops, it has come to also designate a stereotypically haughty or otherwise unlikeable woman.
The following, for example, is from The Sun (City of Auckland, New Zealand) of Saturday 14th December 1929 [page 10, column 3]:
“GAFOOPSES”
THE QUIET CORNER
(Written for The Sun by the Rev. Charles Chandler, Assistant City Missioner.)“I always meant to have him done,” said Mrs. Gafoops as she placed her infant son into the outstretched, surpliced arms of her benevolent vicar. “I always meant to have him done.” Baptism represented to her some sort of a charm which rendered her baby immune from all contagion, whether of measles, mumps or whooping-cough. In consequence of this, Jim’s infancy was one long rebellion against things which had to be “done” to him. When he was seven years old an epidemic scare arose, and vaccination was the order of the day. Needless to say Mrs. Gafoops had him “done.” Then a few years later orthodoxy demanded Confirmation, whereupon she had him “done” again.
Life, to Mrs. Gafoops, consisted of a long series of performances that had to be gone through by everybody, and none more deserving of these multitudinous experiences than her son Jim.
One of the saddest moments in that poor mother’s life was when she discovered that Jim was old enough to “do” for himself, and sadder still was she upon the day when he left her little home with the one whom he had chosen to “do” for him, not in any homicidal sense, but for the rest of his life.
The faith of all Gafoopses consists in having things “done.” Not because they feel any inward need, but just because they feel that they ought. Nor do they feel that they ought because they have arrived at any point of intellectual decision, but simply because “everybody’s doing it now.”
Maybe that you are one of the Gafoopses, if not in matters of religion, then in matters of less importance. If you are, then shake hands with the first person who asks you whether you are going to have him “done,” because he or she is bound to be a Gafoops as well.
—Cf. also Mrs Grundy, and the Joneses in the phrase to keep up with the Joneses.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences that I have found of the noun Kafoops (also Cafoops, Kerfoops, etc.):
1-: From a correspondence from Finley, New South Wales, dated Wednesday 1st October 1902, published in The Jerilderie Herald, and Urana Advertiser (Jerilderie, New South Wales, Australia) of Friday 3rd October 1902 [page 2, column 7]:
There is a social institution in our village which is in many respects is [sic] a thundering success. It is the Finley tennis club. It is a success, I am told, in that it has wiped the floor with the kindred institution in Tocumwal 1 on any occasion they have met to struggle for the mastery. It is further, a great social success, in this that within the precincts of its wire-netting boundary, Madame “Tomnoddy” and her friends have ample opportunity of inflicting the social cut on Medamioselle [sic] “Cafoops” and hers. Through the wire barrier I have observed with much amusement, the smashing frowns and the backhand glances that the Amazons interchange with one another.
1 Tocumwal is a town in New South Wales.
2-: From the humorous column The Moving Picture Show, published in The Sun (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Monday 26th May 1913 [page 6, column 6]:
The Amateur Dynamiter.
Those amateurs or silly-season spooks who tried to blow open the safe of Mr. Peter Mathieson, tobacconist, 358 Pitt-street, city, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon have exaggerated ideas concerning the conditions of safety under which burglars and shop-breakers may do their work in Sydney. […] A pronouncement from the Amateur Sporting Federation should be made as soon as possible, for there is reason to believe that the amateur burglars are working with false ideas of security.
(John Kafoops, “Dishcloth Villa,” Rose Bay.)
3-: From one of the unconnected stories making up the humorous column A Mingled Yarn, by ‘Dryblower’, published in The Sun (Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, Australia) of Sunday 21st July 1918 [page 4, column 8]:
Giving evidence in a serving-after-hours case in Perth, a plain-clothes policeman complained that when he asked the barmaid her name she replied it was “Mrs. Ker-foops.”
But should she be brought before Burnside 2,
Who is much on the sour and stern-side,
She could truthfully swear
That each debonair
Mostly addressed her as “Chirnside 3!”
2 Here, the reference is probably to the Australian judge Robert Bruce Burnside (1862-1929).
3 Here, the reference is obscure.
4-: From one of the unconnected paragraphs making up column 2, page 1, of The Fremantle Herald (Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia) of Friday 31st October 1919:
Robbie, the English Lord Kafoops, is trying hard to hide last Saturday’s escapade. Will he succeed?
5-: From an account of an enquiry held at the G.P.O. Building, Adelaide, by the Joint Committee of Public Accounts, into the erection of war service homes in South Australia—account published in The Journal (Adelaide, South Australia, Australia) of Monday 3rd April 1922 [page 1, column 6]:
Herbert Henry Walker, public servant, […] said he applied to the State Bank for a house, 2½ years ago, which was not yet completed. […] He did not believe the complaints came under the direct notice of Mr. McNamara. All letters were signed by Mr. McNamara, per “Mr. Kafoops,” in type, which meant that anybody even the office boy, could attend to them.
6-: From the humorous column On the Buzzer, consisting of questions to, and answers from, ‘Miss Central’, published in The Sport (Adelaide, South Australia, Australia) of Friday 21st December 1923 [page 7, column 2]:
Give us the Father of a Family, whose indignation has been oozing out of the daily papers. Thank you! That Dad? It is?—
[Answer.]
Now, Miss Central, we pacified old Dad a wee bit, so kindly hitch us on to the first parson you can think of one of the uplift variety. Thank you! That the Rev. Kerfoops? Eh? Well, the rev. anything!—
[Answer.]
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