The final versión of the paper is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1172/JCI12608What does a name mean? Don Quixote’s reply to Sancho Panza was that a name is whatever you understand it to mean. This response certainly applies to the evolution of our thinking about chemokines over the ten years of their history. Initially perceived as simple chemoattractants, chemokines are now implicated at diverse phases of the immune response, and their significance is becoming apparent in many areas of biomedicine, including cancer, HIV-1 infection, asthma, and cardiovascular disease.Peer reviewed