{"id":257,"date":"2008-02-14T06:03:28","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T11:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/?p=257"},"modified":"2008-02-21T03:09:47","modified_gmt":"2008-02-21T08:09:47","slug":"is-kemo-therapy-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/?p=257","title":{"rendered":"Is kemo-therapy right?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As long as the language is English, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s likely that what one thinks he heard will be far different from what gets written. <\/font>Let me explain:<\/font>A former student editor of mine wrote that his mother had just completed her kemo-therapy regime (regime should be regimen, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a topic for a future column).<\/p>\n

Although phonetically, it makes sense, the medical procedure is really chemo-therapy. The editor had never read the term, or if he had, didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t snap.<\/p>\n

The chemo prefix comes from the word chemistry or chemical. But why give it a “k” sound when we have many perfectly good words that begin with “ch” and sound like it: cheese, chair, chum? When the editor wrote kemo-therapy, I imagined Tonto, the Lone Ranger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s faithful Indian companion, comforting the masked man with, “You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be OK after I suck the rattlesnake venom out of your ankle, Kemo-sabe.”<\/p>\n

The first time I learned how chemotherapy is spelled, I thought of three acquaintances, my former schoolmate at Immaculate Conception, Alfredo A. Gallegos, my former Mortimer Hall colleague at Highlands, Anselmo Arellano; and long-time Gambles manager Anselmo Al Valdez.<\/p>\n

Friends all call them “Chemo” (the “ch” has the sound of “cheese,” not of “k”), and they got the nickname in different ways.<\/p>\n

Arellano\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nickname is easy. Universally, anyone named Anselmo is nicknamed “Chemo” (pronounced Tchehmo, not kemo). With Gallegos, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a matter of having a classmate plant it on him. Valdez got it from family.<\/p>\n

In high school, Gallegos had a buddy, Eddie Apodaca, who once called him “Chemo.” Why would Eddie do this? Gallegos has no clue. “But if I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t gotten angry about it,” Gallegos said, “the kids would have forgotten about it. Now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had the nickname 50 years and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m used to it.”<\/p>\n

Chemo Arellano, former vice president for academic affairs at then-LVTI, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember the first time he got called Chemo. “I know other Chemos, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all Anselmos,” he said. Chemo Gallegos, retired after 26 years as director of Highlands\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Upward Bound program, said that he signs his name “Alfredo A. Gallegos.” “The \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in my middle name stands for Alejandro, but people think it stands for Anselmo,” Chemo G. said.<\/p>\n

That initial only reinforces the assumption that Anselmo is one of his given names.<\/p>\n

But Eddie Apodaca wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t too far off. At least Alfredo and Chemo share a couple of the same vowels.<\/p>\n

Al Chemo Valdez\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story is a different. “When I started working for Gambles in 1956, my boss, Jess Price, had trouble pronouncing \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAn-selmo,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 so he called me \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAl-selmo,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where my nickname, Al, came in.”<\/p>\n

Valdez remembers that as a child, his brother Emilio struggled with the pronunciation of Anselmo and began calling him An-chemo. Does Valdez know any other Chemos? “Just Chemo Gallegos, Chemo Arellano and Chemo Therapy,” he said.<\/p>\n

This proves is that all Anselmos are also Chemos, but not all Chemos are Anselmos.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s understandable that names like “Alfred” easily morph into “\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcFredo” and “Alfredito,” but the wholesale substitution of consonants as well makes one wonder exactly what the nicknames represent.<\/p>\n

Other variations on given names diverge considerably, such as “Chavela” as a supposed shortening of “Isabel” or “Kika” for “Frances.”<\/p>\n

“Chewy” is a common nickname for “Jesus” (pronounced Heh-soos). The formation of the beginning sounds of these names is identical, except for one being what is called “surd” and the other “sonant.”<\/p>\n

“Tudy” usually refers to someone named “Arturo,” as my own birth certificate lists me, but only once do I recall being called “Tudy.” I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t answer, not knowing I should have.<\/p>\n

“Tudy,” in and of itself, is not objectionable, but it too easily invites the rhyming word “Fruity” as a companion. Those ice cream makers have ruined it for every Tudy. “Tudy” fits better as an appendix to “Rudy.”<\/p>\n

Few names have more variations than “Margaret,” “Elizabeth” and “Catherine.”<\/p>\n

Imagine some of the permutations of the first one: Marge, Marjorie, Margie, Madge and Meg, and \u00e2\u20ac\u201d this is going too far \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Peggy and Peg. Where do these letters come from?<\/p>\n

Similarly, we know Elizabeths now called Liz, Lisa, Liza, Eliza, Lizzy, Lizbeth, Beth, Betsy and Bette. Some of these variations are given names in themselves, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imply that every Betty, for example, is Elizabeth, but many are.<\/p>\n

In the case of Catherine, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cathy, Kathi, Kate, Katy, Kat and others.<\/p>\n

I once spelled the name Cathy, only to be skewered by my student who implied I was an illerate for not knowing it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Kathi. I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t used to ending common words with an “i.” “Besides,” I told Kathi, “it may be your name, but others use it more than you do.”<\/p>\n

Every family has a tale about how nicknames came about. For years, around the house we called Severino, my older brother, “Wow.” Why? One of us must have seen a picture of him holding a large box of popcorn, on which was printed the acronym for Woodmen of the World. In our neighborhood, all knew him as Wow, but occasionally a stranger thought his name was Walt.<\/p>\n

My sister Evangeline became “Bingy,” which is miles away from the given name. How\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d it come about? Quien sabe, Kemo-sabe. Even today more people refer to her as Bingy.<\/p>\n

As for me, call me “Manny” and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll know the caller comes from my Railroad Avenue haunts. Is any of my names “Manuel”? No, my middle name is Benjamin.<\/p>\n

So how did this Manny stuff begin? Probably when a 6-year-old thinks, speaks and acts like grown up \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a man \u00e2\u20ac\u201d it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy for such a moniker to stick. So was it more a description of my actions and demeanor than any linguistic similarity to a name?<\/p>\n

In this town, there are and have been many men named Manuel whose friends call them Manny: Manny Sena, Manny Aragon, Manny Chavez, Manny Baca, Manny Martinez, Manny Lucero, Manny Duran, Manny Ulibarri, Manny Villanueva.<\/p>\n

The local phone book shows Manuel dozens of times, while Manny is less common.<\/p>\n

Why won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t more of the Manuels of the world list themselves as Mannys?<\/p>\n

Maybe the kemostry just isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t right.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As long as the language is English, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s likely that what one thinks he heard will be far different from what gets written. Let me explain:A former student editor of mine wrote that his mother had just completed her kemo-therapy regime (regime should be regimen, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a topic for a future column). Although phonetically, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}