http://www.shakki.net/kerhot/KemTS/nap-pieces.htm shakki.

net This article presents words for chess, six chess pieces and check in 74 languages in the table. This article is originally written in Finnish. If you know more languages to be added to the table, please send me e-mail. Your feedback is welcome to my e-mail. Some chess pieces have interesting secondary meanings. The king in chess is usually the same word as the ordinary king in many languages around Europe and Asia (eg. Catalan rei, Finnish kuningas, Polish krl, Chinese wang). Sometimes a language uses a loan word, which does not necessarily mean the ordinary king, eg. the Japanese kingu is a loan word from English king. As far as is known king's basic move has not changed. In the 13th century the king was permitted once in a game to make a leap, and from this the move of castling was developed. King is a translation of shah, the Persian word for king. The rook has many meanings in different languages. The rook is a tower in many European languages (eg. Spanish and Portuguese torre, Finnish torni, French tour, Dutch toren), sometimes a large farm (Frisian stins), a ship (Russian lad'ja, transcribed also as ladya), a fortress or castle (Indonesian benteng) or a wagon (Chinese ju, Estonian vanker). Until the new queen's move was introduced in the 15th century the rook was the most powerful piece. Except for the castling the powers of the rook have been unchanged throughout the known history of chess. Words for chess queen in European languages are generally feminine, with a few exception. But outside Europe the chess queens usually don't have gender or the piece is masculine. The Arabic firz or firzn (counsellor) was never translated into a European language although it was adopted. For example the Italians call the queen as donna ('woman') or more common regina (queen in Italian). A Latin manuscript preserved in the Einsiedeln Monastery in Switzerland (997 AD) contains the first recorded mention of the chess queen (regina). In French usage reine 'queen' replaced fierce or fierge (from the Arabic fers) during the 14th century; during the next century reine was replaced by the word dame. In the Middle Ages the queen or firz was the third weakest piece after the pawn and the fil. However the queen became the mightiest piece in the middle of the 15th century. Chess players may have borrowed the word dame from the game of draughts. The transition from dame to queen would be natural, a desire to pair the central pieces. A recent theory explains that the cult of the Virgin Mary, the ordinary medieval queens and the cult of romantic love would have the transformed the firz into the feminine queen and finally elevated the chess queen into the game's mightiest figure. The queen in Estonian (lipp) is a flag. Arabic (wziir, firzn), Russian (ferz'), Farsi (vazir, farzin), Uzbek (farzin), Hindi (farz, wazr) and Turkish (vezir) among others still use the ancient word of no gender firz for today's chess queen. Usually words for chess knight mean a horse (eg Azerbaijani at, Chinese ma, Dutch paard) or a rider (French cavalier, Czech jezdec) or a horse with rider (Finnish ratsu) or a kind of rider (English knight, Irish ridire 'knight', Breton marc'heg 'knight'). In many countries knight's name is linked with the cavalry which it originally represented, but the German Springer means leaper or jumper which is a kind of horse in the sports. There are many ways in different languages to call a bishop. The bishop can be a messenger (Finnish lhetti and Polish goniec), a clergyman (English bishop and Irish easpag 'bishop' both from

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http://www.shakki.net/kerhot/KemTS/nap-pieces.htm Latin episcopus 'bishop'), a rifleman (Czech stelec), a runner (German lufer, Romansh currider, Latin cursor), an elephant (Indonesian gajah) or a crazy (French fou, also a jester or a fool). Romanian nebun and Greek trels mean fool or crazy. The Dutch loper means 'runner' or 'key'. Dutch has earlier used raadsheer for the bishop, actually there has been a Dutch chess club named Raadsheer. One source mentions raadsman ('adviser') used for bishop, which practise is nowadays unknown. The Frisian fjildhear is the leader on the battlefield. The Italian alfiere is a flagbearer. The Spanish alfil has no other meanings. The fil 'elephant' was the weakest piece in the old game and placed in the array where the bishop now stands. It could be moved to only eight squares by jumping to any of the squares diagonally two squares away. The word fil is derived from the Persian pil 'a chess piece or an elephant'. Because Arabic lacks p, the pil became fil. The prefix al- is definite article, so the Europeans called this piece as fil or alfil (> aufin). In French usage fou replaced aufil during the 16th century. The weird semantics (meanings) of this French word ('chess bishop' vs. 'fool' and 'crazy') has transferred to Romanian and Greek. The name bishop has been used in English-speaking countries since the end of the 15th century when this piece took the place of the aufin used in the old game. The move of the bishop, so different from that of the aufin, is the same as the move of the courier in the German game of that name introduced long before modern chess. The pawn is usually a soldier, more precisely an infantry in Latin pedes. An original secondary meaning is collateral in English pawn. The name pawn derives from the Anglo-French word poun and ultimately from a direct translation of the Arabic word baidaq, a foot soldier. Both German Bauer and Spanish peon mean peasant or agricultural worker. This meaning has been borrowed in many Germanic and Slavonic languages, eg. Frisian boer and Ukrainian pishak both mean farmer. The French pion and the Spanish pen are both derived from the latin pes : pedis 'foot'. The French pion has spread in many languages. In this case the pion does not have another meaning. In Dutch, however, there are some colloquial expressions which refer to the pion and its minor importance.

Checkmate in different languages The term for the end of the game is checkmate, which is derived from the Persian words shah ('king') and mat ('defeated'), the expression "the king is defeated". In most languages mate is mat like in Dutch, French, Polish, Bulgarian, Russian, Czech, Turkish, Greek, Farsi (Persian) and Hindi. Sometimes term for checkmate can precede (or alternatively not) word for check, for example Azeri ( ah v) mat, Albanian ( shah)- mat, Basque xake mate, English ( check) mate, Latvian ( ahs un) mats, Lithuanian ( achas ir) matas, Romanian ah-mat, Croatian ah-mat, Chinese jingsi, Japanese oote-( tsumi), Indonesian ( skak-mati), German ( Schach) matt and Italian scacco-matto. In some languages there is a free variation, mate or checkmate. In these languages chess players tend to use shorter expression (eg. German matt) while non-players tend to use longer expression (eg. German Schach matt), since matt has another meaning in German, 'tired'. In Finnish checkmate is matti but Matti with capital initial is a male name. For chess players the context of mate is clear, even if the players are Finnish and player's name is Matti. The Spanish and Portuguese word for checkmate is mate, Mongolian mad, Vietnamese ht nc and Korean thongcang. The Irish marbhshinn meaning 'checkmate' is a compound of marbh 'dead' and sinn
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http://www.shakki.net/kerhot/KemTS/nap-pieces.htm 'check'. The verb to make checkmate is in Irish marbhshinnigh and in Finnish matittaa.

Miscellaneous The words for chess pieces of languages with non-Latin writing system need to be transcribed, for example the Greek word purgoV is transcribed in Latin letters as pyrgos 'rook'. I have followed the Finnish transcription traditions with a few exceptions, for example instead of the regularly used sh, the however being in scientific use in Finland. So the is usually written as sh in the English transcription, eg the Bulgarian peka 'pawn' can be transcribed as peshka too. The j means in most cases the semivowel (as y in yet, in IPA j), the only exceptions are when the language has its own standard transcriptions with regular domestic use, eg Hindi and Chinese. In Bulgarian and Macedonian words ts can be transcribed as c too, which should be pronounced as [ts], eg carica or tsaritsa 'queen'. Note that in all Slavic languages and Hungarian the letter c is pronounced as [ts]. The letter is always pronounced as ch in check. Artificial languages are not included, the only exception is Esperanto because of its extensive use. All the Tatar words for chess pieces are borrowed from Russian except at 'knight', which means literally 'horse' just like in many other Turkic languages. I have used h for the velar fricative (e g German ch), which is usually transcribed as kh in English and French and x in international phonetics. In the Cyrillic and the Greek alphabet this phoneme is written with the letter X, but since the 2nd century BC Latin has used this letter to indicate the consonantal sequence ks. In the table the Greek x means ks, while in Farsi x means the velar fricative. I here thank all the people who have given me feedback from different European, North American, South American, African and Asian countries.

Chess Pieces in 74 languages + Finnish 3 English French Italian Spanish 10 Portuguese 4 Catalan Friulian Galician Occitan Romanian Latin 2 Basque sakki chess checs scacchi ajedrez xadrez escacs scacs xadrez checs ah lsus ltrunculrum xake, xake-joko kuningas kuningatar king queen roi dame re donna rey dama, reina rei dama rei re rei rey rege rx errege dama, reina regjine raa fenno dam, regin rgna dama torni rook tour torre torre torre torre roc torre castel turn turris gaztelu ratsu knight cavalier cavallo caballo cavalo cavall cjaval cabalo cabal cal eques zaldun lhetti bishop fou alfiere alfil bispo alfil alfl bispo falour nebun cursor alfil sotilas pawn pion pedone pen peo pe pedon pen piun pion pedes peoi sakki check chec scacco jaque xeque escac, xec scac xaque echec ah cav rg xake +
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http://www.shakki.net/kerhot/KemTS/nap-pieces.htm Dutch schaken koning dame Afrikaans skaak koning dame Frisian skake kening daem German Schach Knig Dame Danish skak konge dronning Norwegian sjakk konge dame Icelandic skk, tafl kngur drottning frgv, Faroese skk, talv kongur drotning Romansh 17 schah retg dama Maltese cess re regina

toren toring stins Turm trn trn hrkur rkur tur kastell, torri

paard perd, ruiter hynder Springer springer springer riddari riddari chaval kavallier

loper loper fjildhear Lufer lber lper biskup bispur currider isqof

pion pion boer Bauer bonde bonde pe finna pur suldat

schaak skaak skaak schach skak sjakk skk skk

+ Irish 6 Gaelic Welsh Breton Lithuanian Latvian Estonian Hungarian 16 ficheall tileasg, fidhcheall gwyddbwyll echedo achmatai ahs male sakk r rgh banron banrgh caiseal caisteal castell tour boktas tornis vanker bstya ridire ridire marchog marc'heg irgas zirdzi ratsu huszr easpag easpaig esgob furlukin rikis laidnis oda fut ceithearnach sinni pn, ceatharnach gwerinwr pezh-gwerin pstininkas ach bandinieks ahs ettur ahh gyalog, sakk paraszt + Esperanto Russian Belorussian Ukrainian Polish Czech 13 Slovak 14 Slovenian Croatian 15 Serbian 15 Macedonian Bulgarian 7 Albanian
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brenin brenhines roue rouanez karalius valdov karalis dma kuningas lipp kirly vezr

ako ahmaty ahmaty ahy szachy achy ach ah ah ah

reo korol' karol' korol' krl krl kr kralj kralj kralj

damo, reino ferz' ferz' koroleva hetman, dama, krlowa dma dma dama, kraljica dama dama

turo lad'ja laddzj tura wiea v vea trdnjava top, kula top

evalo kon' kon' kin' skoczek, ko jezdec jazdec konj

kuriero slon slon slon goniec stelec strelec lovec

peono peka peka piak pionek pec peiak kmet pjeak, pijun , peak, pion pion peka ushtar, gur

ak ah ah ah szach ach ach ah ah ah ah ah shah

konj, skaka lovac , konj, skaka lovac konj kon kal lovets ofitser 12 oficer ,

ah kral , ah, ahmat tsar shah mbret

kralitsa top , dama, tsaritsa top mbretresh kala

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http://www.shakki.net/kerhot/KemTS/nap-pieces.htm Greek 20 skki vasilis vaslissa pyrgos , ppos, logo , trels pini aximatiks rou, sah + Turkish satran Azerbaijani ahmat Uzbek atran Turkmen kt Chuvash ahmat Bashkir ahmat Karachay-Balkar ahmat (-la) Kumyk ahmat Karakalpak ahmat Tuvin (hl)ydyraa ah, kral ah oh a korol' korol' pattah pata pata nojan vezir vezir farzin perzi koroleva ferz' ferz' vazir koroleva merze kale top ruh ruh tura tura tura lad'ja tura terge at at ot at laa, ut at at at at a"t fil fil fil pil slon fil slon pil teve asker, piyon piyada pijoda pyjada peka peka peka peka pijada ool ah ah kit kt ah ah ah ah ah a, ah + Kalmyk Mongolian Buryat Pahlavi Farsi Arabic Amharic Swahili senterej sataranji, chesi atr atar atar tatrang atrand han nojon nojon h h atrang mlik negus bersn bers berse frazn vazir, farzin tergn tereg terge mdajr rox mrn mor' morin asp asb hosaan, tabja faras ferese jamadari zan temee temeen pl fil fiil fil, saba padri kvn h hbn pajdag pijde skrii, beedq medeq kitunda + Hindi Bengali Malay Indonesian Vietnamese Korean Georgian 8 Armenian 9 Hebrew Chinese 19 Japanese atranj db catur catur c (quc te), c tng cang.ki t'adrak'i axmat
shakhmat

allgn ag aa ki

wziir, firzaan ferz der ngome

mfalme malkia

kit, hth, ru kh rj montri, rn nouk raja menteri tir raja menteri benteng con xe, con tng con hong hu con thp bdh farz, wazr oang mepe arqa nje.oang t'ura t'aguhi cha et'li navak
tseriakh

ghor ghor kuda kuda con m, con nga mal mxedari dzi
sus tseriakh, sus m naito

t th gajah gajah con tng, con voi sang k'u p'il

pyd, paidal ah, kit askar pion con tt col p'aik'i zinvor
chayal

skak chiu tng cang.kun (pat.a.la) ax

melekh malka akhmat melekh malka

guj xingq wng chesu kingu

hu kuiin

tirah j rukku

xing bishoppu

khajal bng poon

akh

jing oote +

Note that this article is written in the Unicode (UTF-8) Character Set. Several foreign letters are underlined and Page 5 of 8 24/01/2013 21:44 PM

http://www.shakki.net/kerhot/KemTS/nap-pieces.htm explained below. Arabic: = a in cat, = sh, j = y in yet, ii aa ee = long vowels Armenian: l = g (IPA gamma), dz is an affricate written also as z' [dz] Azerbaijani: e = e upside down [a in cat], [sh], y [y in yet] Bengali: accents indicate long vowels, th is retroflex and aspirated t, = nasalized u. Farsi: = French j, x = German ch Georgian: ' (apostrophe) indicates an ejective (glottalised) consonant, in the linguistics written as a dot above or below the letter. x = Cyrillic x or German ch Hindi: accents indicate long vowels, t and r are retroflex, kh is a velar fricative or aspirated stop, = nasalized u. Kalmyk: g = / h /, = / o /, = / Y / (Cyrillic letters) Mongolian: = / Y / (Cyrillic letter) Serbian chess pieces are transcribed as they were Croatian ones, with one exception: pawn is peak or pion. Turkmen: = / Y / (Cyrillic letter) Uzbek: = French j, h = German ch

References 2 My source is Cassell's Latin Dictionary by D. P. Simpson, 1959 (1968). The original meaning of the word ltrunculus was an unknown game. Latin has been used as literal language by scholars in the Western countries in the Middle Ages. There has been many words for chess in Latin, eg lsus ltrunculrius, lsus scacchrum (Magyar-Latin sztr, Gyrksy Alajos 1960 [1992]). Geitlin's Finnish-Latin Dictionary uses the word ldus ltrunculrum. Back 3 The Finnish word for chess is usually written as shakki, for example in the Finnish chess magazines named Suomen Shakki ('Finland's Chess') and Kirjeshakki (= 'Correspondence Chess'). However, the usual pronounciation of this word begins with 's'. For most Finns // or /sh/ is merely a foreign phoneme or never been in actual use. Just like in Latin and Spanish, Finnish has just one sibilant, the usual /s/. In few words of foreign origin /sh/ is found in the orthography, but these words are usually pronounced as /s/. There is a tendency to write s instead of sh, eg sampoo 'shampoo' and sokki 'shock'. Johan Gabriel Geitlin in 1883 in his Finnish-Latin dictionary writes both sakki ja shakki, the first being primary. Colloquial Finnish words for the queen are daami, matami (both adapted from the French [ma] dame) or rouva (from the German Frau 'Mrs'), and so on. All of them are feminine words, but rarely used for the chess queen. Back Table 4 In Brazil and Portugal chess is xadrez. The initial x means here = sh; the pronounciation is in Portugal [dr] and in Brazil [dris]. The difference is in accent. This Portuguese word is related to Spanish ajedrez and comes originally from Sanskrit via arabic and old farsi. Table 5 The English name rook comes from the Sanskrit ratha, a chariot, through Persian and Arabic rukh. Most European languages adapted the word by homophony through the Italian rocco meaning tower, which was thus translated. The only language other than English that uses a direct transliteration is Icelandic, with hrkur (The Oxford Companion to Chess, David Hooper & Kenneth Whyld 1984, rook). However, note the Friulian (in Northeastern Italy) word roc. Table 6 The Irishr is the ordinary word for 'king' and is also the word for 'king' in chess. It is a cognate of the Latin rx and the same root is found in Hindu and Bengali raja. banron, like the Finnish kuningatar, is the current word for 'queen' and also for the 'queen' in chess. The Irish word for rook caiseal is an early (5-6 century) borrowing from Latin castellum. The Irish ceithearnach 'pawn' is the word for the traditional Irish foot-soldier. sinni (= +, 'check') is the verbal noun (cf -ing) of the verb sinnigh 'to corner, trap, put in a fix, and in chess, to check'. The close relationship between Irish and Gaelic is obvious, except for tileasg 'chess' (also refers to draughts and backgammon, probably from English tables) and pn (from English pawn). Caisteal is a borrowing from Latin and is the usual word for 'castle'. The other terms are of the same origin as the Irish ones. Fidhcheall, rgh, banrgh and
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http://www.shakki.net/kerhot/KemTS/nap-pieces.htm ceatharnach are native Celtic words in Gaelic. In the case of Welsh, brenin and brehines are the usual words for 'king' and 'queen'. Castell and esgob are borrowings from Latin castellum and episcopus. The word for chess gwyddbwyll is an exact cognate of the Irish ficheall meaning literally "wood-intelligence" in both languages. The word for knight marchog is the ordinary word for rider or knight, cf Breton marc'heg. The word for pawn gwerinwr ordinarily means countryman or rustic in Welsh. Brenin, brenhines, gwyddbwyll, marchog and gwerinwr are native Celtic words in Welsh. Table 7 A colloquial Bulgarian word for rook is tur. Colloquial Russian terms: queen koroleva, rook tura and finally bishop ofitser just like in Bulgarian. So both in Bulgarian and Russian there is a colloquial variant for rook which sounds very much like rook in various European languages, eg French torre. Table 8 The Georgian word for queen t'ura means 'jackal', and the similarity to words meaning 'tower' in many European languages (eg Italian torre and Ukrainian tura) is merely accidental. Table 9 The Armenian word for rook navak means boat, and the word for pawn zinvor means soldier. t and dz are affricates transliterated as and j respectively or z' instead of j depending on the source. Chess pieces in Armenian: Table 10 The Spanishajedrez comes originally from Sanskrit: ajedrez < local Arabic aaran or airan < classic Arabic iran < Pelvi (old Farsi) atrang < Sanskrit aturanga = of 4 members, cf. Latin quattuor and Spanish cuatro = 4. Asturian is a dialect of the Spanish (Castilian) language, not an independent language. However, Asturian is linguistically interesting, because it has retained its initial f unlike Spanish, eg ant in Latin is formica, in Spanish hormiga and in Asturian formiga. The names for chess pieces in Asturian are as follows: axedrez, rei, reina/dama, torre, alfil, caballu, pen and xaque. The Asturian words resemble Spanish ones. The ordinary king in Asturian is perri, but the chess king rei. Aranese (in Occitan/Gascon/Aranese arans) is a variety of Pyrenean Gascon (a dialect of the Occitan language), spoken in Val d'Aran, in northern Spain. The names for chess pieces in Aranese are as follows: eds escacs ('chess'), arri ('king'), firo / arrino ('queen'), tourre, cavaler, alfi and pezoun ('pawn', in plural pezous). The firo for queen is actually a medieval word (old Spanish alferza) from Arabic (< < Pelvi frazen meaning 'guardian'). Table 11 In English speaking countries non-players sometimes call rook a castle, which is now uncommon among players. This is the case for the Dutchkasteel 'id.' too. In Finnishlinna (literally 'castle') means colloquially castling, more generally linnoitus 'castling', literally 'fortress'. Table 12 Apart from Bulgarian , for the bishop there is a colloquial term [frits]. This used to be a name given to German soldiers and officers in the WW II by the Bulgarians, from the German name Fritz. Maybe phonetic similarities have given a stimulus to this innovation for the new term for bishop (oer < > r). Table 13 The name for chess in Czech can be either ach or achy, the latter being plural. Jezdec 'knight' (lit. 'rider') is usually called as k (lit. 'horse'). Table 14 The name of the game in Slovak can be either ach or achy. The former is singular, the latter plural, but both can be used interchangebly; singular is perhaps a bit more usual. The Slovak word for knight jazdec means rider. 15 The Serbian and Croatian chess terminology. The word for pawn has many variations: piak (c), peak (s) or pjeak (c, s) depending on the dialect. The pion (s) and pijun (c) for pawn is a loan from French. In addition kraljica for queen is used instead of dama especially among the Serbs. Both Serbs and Croats say rohada and rokada for castling. Colloquially, both groups sometimes use laufer or even lojfer for bishop. Kralj means king, dama = lady,
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http://www.shakki.net/kerhot/KemTS/nap-pieces.htm kraljica = queen, top means cannon, kula = tower, lovac = hunter, skaka = jumper, konj = horse and finally peak means infantryman or pedestrian. 16 The Hungarian word for pawn paraszt (= peasant) is indeed the informal version of the gyalog. The colloquial word for the huszr 'knight' is l (= horse), and the word for queen vezr (= military leader) is kirlyn (= queen). The futr is no longer used for pawn. Table 17Romansh has six dialects, Grischun dialect is used here. The king, queen, rook and bishop in other dialects: Sursilvan : retg dama tuor currider, Sutsilvan : retg dama tur curider, Surmiran : rtg dama tor curridier, Puter : raig dama tuor curridur, Vallader : rai dama tuor curridur. Romansh is a tiny language in Switzerland. 19 In Chinese: Table 20Greek: zatrki ( ; in classical Greek zatrkion) was a popular board-game in ancient Greece. Nowdays nobody would use the word zatrki in Greece in order to describe chess. They use (skki) instead. The word ppos ( ) for knight literally means horse - as does the second given word, logo ( ). The word trels ( ) for bishop means fool or crazy and is one of the chess terms that have been transferred to Greek from French. The French fou2 'fool' comes from Latin while fou1 'chess bishop' comes from the Persian pil 'chess piece or elephant'. The word pini ( ) for pawn is another loan from French (pion). In Greek check is either sah ( , transcribed also as sakh) or roua ( ): the first word is the common warning and descriptive name for the king in a number of languages, the second word is another loan from French ( roi) as transliterated in Greek. Table

KemTS:n psivulle

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