2/7/2024 0 Comments Name of chess pieces![]() ![]() So it was open to interpretation what to call the piece if the local culture wasn't wanting to retain the arab or persian name of the piece. The piece originally started off as an elephant (if it's agreed that what we call modern chess originated from a military board game out of India) and as the game made its way westward into Europe, the abstract piece representation probably wasn't easily identifiable as elephants, particularly as the game spread to northern game - as most people weren't familiar the beasts. ![]() The piece that appears to have the greater variance for how it is named is the piece that in English is called the Bishop. Since the hottest it ever got in the Land of Lower Slobbovia was -50 degrees Farenheit they all died. They were sun worshippers and one day the King decided to create a national holiday in which everyone was required to walk around entirely nude all day. Readers may be interested in knowing what actually happened to the Slobbovians. Since the Slobbovians were too retarded to have a written language no written Slobbovian word is provided. The Slobbovian words for the chess pieces are listed below with the English word given first and the Slobbovian word translated into English is given next. The words were discovered recently and carefully thawed out by scientists. Not surprisingly we don't find any elephants in the European chess sets.I happen to be an expert in the Lower Slobbovian language which is no longer spoken due to the last last inhabitant of Lower Slobbovia having frozen to death in the winter of 1531. The only reason why we still have knowledge of the language is because it had gotten so cold that the very words themselves were frozen. Rook then really points to the Oriental origins of chess, while medieval northern Europeans put their own interpretations on the other pieces, effectively naturalizing them. ![]() In English, we don't speak of a "tower" as Germans and Scandinavians do (although the old-fashioned term "castle" persists among the older generations), but of a "rook" which has no etymological value in English as it is originally a loanword from Persian (meaning "chariot"), via Arabic and French. In French, the bishop is neither a bishop or a runner but a "fou" (fool/jester). Even the Queen is known as a "lady" (and not Königin/drottning, as one might expect). Pawn and Bauer/bonde have some overlap but are still distinct conceptual entities. So the knight was not a horseman but a "jumper", and the bishop was not a man of the cloth but a "runner". Germans (and slightly later presumably Scandinavian speakers, probably mediated via German) must when the game arrived on their shores have seen the pieces of the newly introduced game and associated them with different things than did speakers of English. It's interesting how the various pieces have been named and conceptualized in different languages. Rook: German = Turm "tower" Swedish = torn "tower"Īs you can see, Scandinavian (here represented by Swedish) tends to follow the German model, rather than the English-language one. Queen: German = Dame "lady" Swedish = dam "lady" Pawn: German = Bauer "farmer, peasant" Swedish = bonde "farmer, peasant" Knight: German = Springer "jumper" Swedish = springare "jumper"īishop: German = Läufer "runner" Swedish = löpare "runner" ![]() I can only speak for German and Scandinavian, but, in contrast to English, the names of the following pieces are: ![]()
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