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S T R A N G E M A P S — J A N U A RY 4 , 2 0 2 2

How did chess pieces

get their names?
One player’s pawn is another’s farmer. And at
one time, the queen was a rather powerless
virgin.

Credit: zef art / Adobe Stock

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Chess has a long and complex history,

beautifully reflected in the variety of names
the pieces have taken over the years. Of all
the pieces, it is perhaps the queen that
evolved the most. These maps offer a
glimpse into the game’s fascinating historical
and cultural backstories.

Listen to this article

Frank Jacobs

Russia’s Vladislav Artemiev and Alina Bivol

(background) during the FIDE Chess World Rapid & Blitz
Championship 2021 in Warsaw on December 29. (Credit:
Foto Olimpik / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

A game of chess is like a Chinese newspaper: a set

of symbols that can be understood by people who
speak different languages. In the Chinese
example, Mandarin and Cantonese speakers can
read and understand the same text, even though
they use different words for the same concepts.

Chess too is perfectly intelligible by participants

who share no other communication skills. But
scratch the surface and the standardized game
reveals a multitude of linguistic particularities.
One player’s pawn is another’s farmer. What you
may call a bishop, somebody else knows as an
elephant. Or a fool.

Chaturanga to skák
Chess took a millennium to conquer the known
world. It first emerged in India in the early 7th
century as chaturanga, finally reaching Iceland as
skák around 1600 AD. (See Strange Maps #844 for
an itinerary of the game and an overview of its
various names across the world.)

As it moved west toward Europe — first passing

through the Persian and Arab cultural filters —
the game maintained its board, pieces, and most
of its rules. Yet it also underwent some subtle and
not-so-subtle tweaks. In a sense, the symbolic
representation of an Indian battlefield turned into
a sublimated form of medieval tournament.

Not only the game itself, but some pieces also

assumed different identities as they entered new
cultural spaces. Others, however, stubbornly
clung to their origin stories. Some of those
differences have interesting histories. But
intriguingly, other differences remain shrouded in
mystery.

Pawnography

Footsoldier or farmer? In war, the difference may be

small. (Credit: Imgur)

The notion of the pawn as a “foot soldier” is fairly

consistent throughout the history of chess, with
the Indo-European root for “foot” echoing all the
way from the original Sanskrit padati, via the
Latin pedester to modern French pion (and
imported into modern Turkish as piyon) and
English pawn.

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Other terms are available: in old French, pawns

were called garçons (“boys”). Additionally, pion is
sometimes said to derive from espion (“spy”).

Interestingly, the Spanish term peon also means

“farmer,” which is the term used across a number
of Germanic languages and a few others (e.g.
bonde in Danish, kmet in Slovenian) — no doubt
because in times of war, farmers were the most
obvious source of cannon fodder.

Have horse, will jump

This horse has a millennial pedigree. (Credit: Imgur)

From the very beginning of chaturanga, this piece

— originally called asva, Sanskrit for “horse” —
has firmly maintained its equine association. Of
course, this is likely because it is the only piece
that is able to jump over the heads of the other
pieces. As the map shows, the variation in
nomenclature is fairly limited: the piece is either
named after the animal (e.g., cavallo in Spanish),
its rider (e.g., riddari in Icelandic), or the
movement it makes (e.g., springare in Swedish).

Because of this proximity in meaning, and the fact

that the piece is usually styled like a horse,
adjacent concepts are often used interchangeably.
In Hungarian, for instance, the official term is
huszár (“knight”), but the piece is also colloquially
called ló (“horse”). Similarly, in Czech the piece is
a jezdec (“rider”) but often simply a kun (“horse”).

For those about to rook

From chariot to castle. (Credit: Imgur)

In the earliest versions of the game, this was a

“chariot” — ratha in Sanskrit, rukh in Persian. Yet
in many languages across Europe, this piece is
known as a tower or a castle. How did that
happen?

One theory is that the Arabs transmitted the

Persian term rukh almost unchanged to Europe,
where it turned into old Italian roc or rocco. That’s
virtually identical to rocca, the old Italian term for
“fortress”, which association in turn gave rise to
alternate names for the piece: torre (“tower”) and
castello (“castle”).

Another theory is that Persian war chariots were

so heavily armored that they resembled small,
mobile fortifications — hence the link between
rukh and castles.

A third idea is that the people carrier on the back

of elephants in India, called a howdah and used in
war to attack opponents, was often represented as
a fortified castle tower in chess pieces from 16th–
and 17th-century Europe. The elephant eventually
disappeared, while the (Persian) name stuck.

With a good old-fashioned siege in mind, it is not

such a big leap from castles and towers to
“cannon,” which is what the piece is called
throughout the Balkans.

What is more puzzling is that the rook is called

“ship” (or “boat”) in some other languages,
including Russian (lad’já) and Armenian (navak).
Could there have been a translation mishap?
Rukh is Persian for “chariot,” while roka is Sanskrit
for “boat” (but no early chess piece was ever
called roka). Or is this because Arab rooks often
were V-shaped, like a ship’s bow? Or because the
piece moves in a straight line, like a ship?

Nobody knows for sure. However, ancient Indian

chess sets visualized this piece as an elephant.
And indeed, in Hindi and several other Asian
languages, the piece is still called “elephant”.

Elephant goes episcopal

An eclectic range of epithets. (Credit: Imgur)

No chess piece elicits a wider range of epithets

across Europe than the bishop. It starts as another
elephant, except that this piece was actually called
“elephant” in Sanskrit (hasti) and in Persian (pil).
That was Arabized as al-fil, which was Latinized
as alphilus.

In French, that became fil, fol, and finally fou,

which means “fool” or “jester.” That term was the
result of a chain of Chinese whispers, which was
then faithfully translated into Romanian. Another
whisper changed alphilus, which means nothing
in Italian, into alfiere, which means “standard
bearer” in Italian.

The wide range of this piece’s movements

explains terms such as “runner” (e.g., Läufer in
German), “hunter” (e.g., lovac in Serbian),
“gunner” (e.g., strelec in Slovak), and “spear” (oda
in Estonian). The Russians are among those who
have maintained the original “elephant,” called
slon in Russian. But in the past, it has also been
called a durak (“fool”, probably a loan from the
French) and an offizer.

Officer and/or nobleman is a rather generic term.

A notable alternative to the official Bulgarian term
ofitser (“officer”) is fritz, derived from the
nickname for German troops during the Second
World War — a relatively recent innovation,
probably helped by the fact that it sounds similar
to the official term.

Apart from English, only a few other languages

call this piece the “bishop”: Icelandic, Faroese,
Irish, and Portuguese. Why? Nobody really knows.
The miter-shaped appearance came after the
name. The term does have some pedigree: the
Lewis chessmen, carved from walrus ivory in the
12th century, already have the bishops dressed in
recognizably ecclesiastical garb.

The Virgin and other

versions

From king’s counselor to king’s consort. (Credit: Imgur)

While it may seem logical that the king has a

queen by his side, that’s not how things started
out. In the Indian original, this piece was the
king’s “counselor” (mantri in Sanskrit). The Arabs
used wazir (“vizier,” i.e., the ruler’s
minister/secretary), which was Latinized to farzia,
which became the French vierge (“virgin”).

That was an intriguing mistranslation because, in

large parts of Europe, the trend was to feminize
the king’s companion. A manuscript from around
the year 1000 contains the first mention of the
piece with the name regina (“queen”), possibly a
Byzantine innovation. In the 14th century, reine
(“queen”) replaced vierge on the French
chessboard, and a century later, reine herself was
replaced by dame (“lady”). This may have been a
borrowing from the game of checkers.

Why did the king’s counsel become his consort?

Three (possibly complimentary) theories
circulate: the religious cult of the Virgin Mary, the
literary trope of courtly love, and the relative
importance of queens in medieval politics. What
is clear, however, is that the piece not only
acquired a new, female identity but also greater
powers. The mantri could only move one square
diagonally, whereas the modern queen combines
the straight-line moves of the rook with the
diagonal ones of the bishop.

While the piece is called “lady” or “queen” in most

European languages, Russian and other Slavic
languages retain versions of ferz, the Persian term
for “counselor.” Polish uses hetman, a high
military rank from Eastern European history.
Russian (and other Slavic languages) also
variously use(d) koroleva (“queen”), korolevna
(“princess”), tsaritsa (“emperor’s wife”), kral
(“queen”), dama (“lady”), and baba (“old
woman”).

Mysteriously, Estonian calls the piece lipp (“flag”).

One piece to rule them all

It’s good to be the king. (Credit: Imgur)

Uniquely, the game’s central piece has

maintained its original title throughout Europe. In
the Indian game, it was called rajah, Sanskrit for
“king.” The Persian equivalent shah gave rise to
the name of the game itself in many other
languages (e.g., échecs in French or skák in
Icelandic).

As is well known, “checkmate” derives from the

Persian for “the king is dead” — although, when
playing against an actual king, a more prudent
phrase was used: “the king has retired.”

This piece’s kingly status is a constant throughout

the map, from koról’ in Russian and König in
German to erregea in Basque and teyrn in Welsh
(although the latter word, related to “tyrant,” is a
less common Welsh term for “king” than brenin).
In Yiddish (not on the map), the king can be
called kinig or meylekh, two words that mean the
same, but derive from German and Hebrew,
respectively. In Russian, alternate names include
tsar (“emperor”) and kniaz (“prince”).

However, in Asian versions of the game, this

central piece has a slightly different status: a
“general” in Chinese and Korean and a “prince” in
Mongolian.

The king can only go one square in any direction,

but in the 13th century, he was permitted one leap
per game. This eventually evolved into the
combination move called “castling,” which
involves a rook. The king moves about his castle,
so to speak.

Images found here on Imgur.

Strange Maps #1124

Got a strange map? Let me know at

strangemaps@gmail.com.

Follow strange maps on Twitter and Facebook.

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