I belatedly noticed that the first three letters of
nguyen (Shanghai opium-smokers's slang for "to need
badly") could be rearranged to form gnu (cf. Antelope
Gnu, Adam Kozlevich's car in The Golden Calf). If we add
rue (French for "street") and Russian soft sign to
nguyen, we'll also get ryuen' (the old Russian word for September):
ÎÇÕÅÎ + ÒÀ + Ø = ÇÎÕ +
ÒÀÅÎØ
Alexey Sklyarenko