Cicak (said CHEE-chak: in Malay and Indonesian a "c" sounds like the Italian "ci") is the everyday name for the small house geckos of South and Southeast Asia. The word imitates their call, cak, cak, cak.
Listen to it
A common house gecko calling at night:
For a closer look at the animal itself, with Indonesian narration: Cicak bukan sembarang cicak (Hemidactylus frenatus).
Where it lives
The main cicak, the common house gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus), is native to South and Southeast Asia and Near Oceania. It lives in forest and woodland, but it does best on the walls of houses, waiting near lamps for insects. It has hitched rides on ships and cargo to almost every warm coast: in Mexico it was first collected in Acapulco in 1895 and now lives in 21 of the 32 states.
One gecko, many names
In many of the languages where it lives, its name is also a sound: cicak, tiktiki, jing-jok. Each name sits on a major city where that language is spoken.
In the cultures where it is common
- Bali. In Balinese belief the cecak is a form of Dewi Saraswati, the goddess who protects speech and writing.
- Malaysia, Indonesia, India. A gecko chirping right after someone speaks means the words are true. In Hindi and Bengali the call is heard as thik thik thik, "right, right, right".
- Philippines. A ticking butiki means a visitor or a letter is on the way.
- Thailand. A chirp as someone leaves the house is a bad omen, the "greeting gecko".
- Indonesia. Cicak vs Buaya (gecko against crocodile) named the 2009 clash between the anti-corruption agency KPK, the small gecko, and the police and prosecutors, the crocodile. It is now shorthand for a small underdog standing up to something big.
- Indonesia. Children grow up singing Cicak-cicak di dinding: "Cicak-cicak di dinding, diam-diam merayap. Datang seekor nyamuk, hap! Lalu ditangkap." (Little geckos on the wall, creeping quietly. Along comes a mosquito, hap! And it's caught.)
The song, as Indonesian children know it:
Italian echoes
- Ciak. Cicak sounds almost like ciak, the Italian name for the film clapperboard, from the snap it makes. "Ciak, si gira!" starts every take, and a REPL is one quick take after another.
- Cicalare. From cicala, the cicada, Italian gets cicalare and cicaleccio, idle chatter: another small animal named after its sound, and a REPL is a chat with the compiler.
- Cic ciac. The Italian sound of quick little steps through puddles, close to the gecko's own cak cak.
- Čičak. Across the Adriatic, in Croatian and Serbian, čičak is the burdock burr that sticks to everything, and Velcro is čičak traka. A fitting coincidence for an animal with sticky toes.
In Western literature
- Italo Calvino, Palomar (1983). In "Il ventre del geco", Mr. Palomar spends his evenings watching a gecko's belly through the glass of his window as it hunts under the lamp. It is the Mediterranean cousin of the cicak, from the same family of house geckos.
- George Orwell, Burmese Days (1934). Flory's bedroom in Burma has a tuktoo, the big tokay gecko named after its call: "A tuktoo clung to the wall, flat and motionless like a heraldic dragon." Later he stands "watching the tuktoo stalk a moth above the bookshelves."
- Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (1869). The classic account of the region mentions small lizards in passing, but no named gecko.
Why it fits a REPL
- It answers back, and its answer is said to confirm that what was just said is true.
- It is quick: a split-second strike after a patient wait at the lamp.
- It is adaptable: its toe pads stick to glass and ceilings, and it has settled on every warm coast of the world.
- It is resilient: it drops its tail to escape a predator and grows it back.
- The name is five letters, free on nimble, and has its own emoji 🦎.
Sources
Common house gecko (range, names, folklore), Cicak on Indonesian Wikipedia (the call, Bali), Konfrontasi Cicak dan Buaya, Burmese Days, The Malay Archipelago. Maps drawn from Natural Earth country shapes.