Where did the name come from?

I have had two recent requests for an etymology for the name “Chrinitoid”. One came from the curator of the art collection that now owns the sculpture, the other from a fan. A couple of years ago, I received an email from a fellow Chrin-lover and apparently, the story goes like this:

Dear Tom,
I read your article on the chrinitoid in the latest alumni magazine with considerable interest. The chrinitoid has a special place in my heart.

I thought you might like to know of the genesis of the name. Way back in high school, a friend of mine used the word to refer to unspecified internal organs (e.g., “uhgg, he got me right in the chrinatoids”). When I went to RPI, the first club I joined was the humor magazine, Unicorn. I came up with an idea for a fake Reader’s Digest article, of the sort that were running at that time (this was 1972, mind you). I borrowed my friend’s word, drew a small picture and wrote part of an article about it. The first JPG file I’ve attached shows you the result. (Note: the afterword was added by someone else!)

For some reason, the Unicorn staff took the idea and ran with it, basing practically the whole issue of the magazine on the idea (see second JPG file). Inexplicably, they spelled it wrong — that is, if it is possible to misspell a neologism that has no real meaning.

And, to coin a phrase, the rest is history. The word caught on around campus, and the Rickey sculpture was never called anything else. I suppose “chrinitoid”
was easier to say than “Two Rectangles, Vertical Gyratory Up, Variation
III.”

I’m glad you found the sculpture lurking in Europe. I’ve wondered where it’d got to.
If you want to use the attached pictures [1] [2] on your website, feel free.

Best wishes,

Sandy Stewart, ’76

So there it is. Makes about as much sense as anything else I have heard.

~Tom