It is said that under the hot sun of India there was an ancient king named Sheram. His eyes had lost their shine many years before, after the death of his son who fought in battle and never came home. This grief burrowed into the father’s heart, causing his outlook on life to become dim and disappointing. His subjects could not figure out how to restore him to his former self. One day, a man named Sissa showed up at the palace. He requested an audience with the king to show him a game that, according to him, would excite and entertain him: chess. After the rules had been explained, they started to play. The king was astounded after the game and his pain slowly started to fade away. He decided to thank the visitor with anything his heart desired as a token of gratitude. Sissa asked him to place one grain of wheat in the first square of the chessboard, two in the second square, four in the third, and so on exponentially until reaching the last square. Sheram had the amount required calculated and was shocked when they told him he was to hand over 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains of wheat, a sum that would be impossible for him to deliver, so he asked Sissa to stand by his side as his counselor.
This legend has been associated for centuries with the origins of the most famous intellectual game in history. However, it is true that the chess that we know today is not the same chess played in the past. It seems that its most direct predecessor was an Indian game known as chaturanga which supposedly dates to the 4th and 5th century in Asia and then spread throughout China, Russia and Europe. This game arrived in Spain thanks to Arabic culture, which in turn had picked it up in Persia. The game essentially reproduces a war between two sides that is carried out an orderly manner. In fact, this is a key aspect when analyzing the impact had by chess-related vocabulary throughout the years in different cultures, since in each language the members of these armies are different.
In fact, the term chaturanga literally means “having four limbs”, since it refers to the four ancient bodies of the Indian army represented by the pieces on the board: Infantry (pawns), cavalry (knights), mounted elephants (bishops) and the chariots (rooks), apart from the pieces corresponding to the king and what we know today as the queen.
Curiously enough, this final piece was originally not a member of royalty, but was called alferza or fiz in Spanish, which comes from the Hispanic Arabic word alfarza, which came from the Persian farzin (guardian) and referred to the vizier or counselor of the king. Research on modern chess discovered that the change may have taken place in Renaissance Valencia in the 15th century, where the female sovereigns started to have more influence. Its appearance may even have something to do with María de Castilla, the wife of Alfonso V. For this reason, the queen gained much more powerful movement on the board. In vulgar Latin, two forms coexisted: regina and domina, since dominus was used in some places with the meaning of “king”. The latter term traveled to Italy and spread around Europe, becoming the most popular root for the piece’s name: Dame in German, dame in French, dam in Swedish, donna in Italian, etc. English however uses its corresponding term for royalty, “queen”, and Spanish uses both reina and dama. In Portuguese, however, the most-used term is rainha. Russian players use ферзь /fjerz’/.
Another piece has a very interesting story, which starts with the Arabic term alfil (الفيل /alfil/) which means “elephant”. These animals were used to transport soldiers to the battlefield. However, when the game of chess reached mainland Europe, people were confused by the pointy tip on top of the piece (which originally represented the elephant’s tusks) It made sense for the king to be accompanied into battle by a priest since the clergy had a strong military influence and often even had their own armies. Curiously enough, in Spanish the influence of Arabic culture has preserved the original term alfil, maintaining the linguistic connection to elephants. The French use the term fou, which means “fool”, but this seems to be a popular etymology. The term fou could even be related to foule, which is an ancient Persian word for “elephant”. In Russian they use the direct translation of the same animal, слон /slon/. Regarding the other animal-related piece on the board, the knight has not changed much. Some languages like “knight” in English, use the name of the he rider (such as cavalier in French) and others use the animal (cavallo in Italian or конь /kon’/ in Russian), although one exception is German which uses Springer, or “the jumper”.
The rook has also had an interesting evolution in different languages. This part originally had the name of rukh and represented a chariot. Oddly enough, in English this original term is preserved in the word rook, but other languages followed a completely different path. The Italians associated the sound of rukh to the word rocco (rock) and by association this became related to the concept of a fort, eventually adopting the term torre which translates to “tower”. This idea was carried over into other languages such as Turm in German, taarn in Danish, tour in French, torre in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish as well as turn in Romanian. In old Spanish roque was used as well as torre, but the former only remains today in the name of a move used in the game, enroque. In Russian, this piece is known asладья /lád’ja/, which was anciently used to refer to a type of boat used by the Slavs. Legend tells that the Russians traveled to India by boat because crossing by land was very dangerous and full of obstacles. Once, they brought typical Russian toys with them, but they saw that the children in India did not care for them because they were enamored with chaturanga. The sailors were surprised and decided to bring the game back north on their boat. They were so enthralled by ancient chess and played it so much that they forgot to do their duties as crew members until one day that they did not notice a storm that brought gigantic waves with it. When the storm subsided, they noticed that some of the pieces had fallen into the water, so they decided to make new ones our of wood that were even more beautiful than the ones they brought from India. The only problem was that they did not remember how the pieces were exactly, so they included a design of their own, using generals to represent the bishops and their own ships for the rooks.
Finally, we have the pawns, which in almost every language take their original etymology from the idea of “walking or taking a step”, describing their characteristic movement across the board including “pawn” in English. peoi in Euskera, pesec in Czech, pion in French, peón in Spanish, peão in Portuguese and пешка /pjiéshka/ in Russian. As for the king, he has the corresponding title in every language.
Chess has been so present in diverse cultures, causing the rules and the words used to describe gameplay to change considerably in each language. What never changes is that the game helps develops intellect, improves problem-solving capacity and increases concentration and memory. So, let’s play!
Information from the following links were used to write this article:
- https://www.elmundo.com/portal/pagina.general.impresion.php?idx=34879#:~:text=El%20nombre%20del%20juego%20hace,de%20combate%20(las%20torres).
- https://sendasdelviento.es/curiosidades/origen-piezas-del-ajedrez/#El_alfil
- https://www.elmundo.es/comunidad-valenciana/2014/11/17/546a0da1e2704e08268b458e.html
- https://chess-boom.online/nazvanie-figur-v-shahmatah/
- http://chessknigi.ru/chess-article/shahmatnaja-ladja.html
Picture reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq8eOFUwI9c
