At the exact point where the text must name the ultimate, both hand over an admitted placeholder — a verb-phrase, a 'designation' — and record on the page that the true name is not being given.
Moses asks point-blank what name to report — 'they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?' — and receives a formula instead of a name: 'I AM THAT I AM... say... I AM hath sent me unto you.'
Of the source of all things: 'I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Dao (the Way or Course). Making an effort (further) to give it a name I call it The Great' — after ch. 1 has already ruled that 'the name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.'
Neither text merely omits the name; each performs the substitution visibly. Exodus answers a direct naming request with first-person being ('ehyeh asher ehyeh'); Laozi says 'I do not know its name' and labels 'Dao' an effortful stand-in. Both traditions then build liturgy/philosophy on the placeholder while the withheld name does the work.
Our fact-checkers corrected the first draft:
Both traditions rule that death changes the legal status of a person's spoken name · the same object, handled with opposite polarity: China seals the dead man's name away from all mouths; Egypt performs ritual speech to keep it in circulation.
The incognito divine guest in a mortal house: the name is refused (or withheld) for the duration of the visit, and the moment of the name · asked for or finally spoken · coincides with fire, the god's departure, and mortal peril for the host.
The same three-stage avian reconnaissance protocol from a grounded vessel, with overlapping species (dove, raven) and the identical inferential logic: the bird that does not come back is the good news.
An identical four-beat sequence: landing → burnt offering → the deity smells the smoke and is moved → vow of never-again sealed by a physical token of remembrance (a string of sky-blue lapis at the goddess's throat; a bow of color in the cloud).