How to get the onclick calling object?

I think the best way is to use currentTarget property instead of target property.

The currentTarget read-only property of the Event interface identifies the current target for the event, as the event traverses the DOM. It always refers to the element to which the event handler has been attached, as opposed to Event.target, which identifies the element on which the event occurred.

For example:

<a href="#"><span class="icon"></span> blah blah</a>

Javascript:

a.addEventListener('click', e => {
    e.currentTarget; // always returns "a" element
    e.target; // may return "a" or "span"
})

The easiest way is to pass this to the click123 function or you can also do something like this(cross-browser):

function click123(e){
  e = e || window.event;
  var src = e.target || e.srcElement;
  //src element is the eventsource
}

pass in this in the inline click handler

<a href="123.com" onclick="click123(this);">link</a>

or use event.target in the function (according to the W3C DOM Level 2 Event model)

function click123(event)
{
    var a = event.target;
}

But of course, IE is different, so the vanilla JavaScript way of handling this is

function doSomething(e) {
    var targ;
    if (!e) var e = window.event;
    if (e.target) targ = e.target;
    else if (e.srcElement) targ = e.srcElement;
    if (targ.nodeType == 3) // defeat Safari bug
        targ = targ.parentNode;
}

or less verbose

function doSomething(e) {

    e = e || window.event;
    var targ = e.target || e.srcElement || e;
    if (targ.nodeType == 3) targ = targ.parentNode; // defeat Safari bug
}

where e is the event object that is passed to the function in browsers other than IE.

If you're using jQuery though, I would strongly encourage unobtrusive JavaScript and use jQuery to bind event handlers to elements.