Originally Posted by Inertianinja

I don't have much to go on, I realize, but Ciocc is my first choice. I see the guy, the way he talks and acts, and I see my own relatives.

in fact, my family has been using some Italian word in dialect - it sounds like "chooch" phonetically. my parents don't know how to spell it, but they use it like an affectionate way of calling someone stupid...hard to explain.
the calabrese dialect kind of muddies regular Italian.

if it turns out they've been calling me ciöcc all these years...