Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 August 6

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August 6

Chess pieces

Why names of chess pieces in Japanese and Korean are not these languages' words of the meanings of pieces, but adaptations from English? --40bus (talk) 18:28, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

It's possibly due to the fact that both Japan and Korea have their own native variants of Chess, and Westernized words would serve as differentiation, if I am to speculate. As for the meanings of the words used for the various chess pieces, it actually varies quite a bit, internationally. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:40, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Also, the chess pieces have no inherent meaning. See History of chess. As far as we know, an early form of chess originated in India, while apart from relatively minor issues the game as we know it today, as defined by FIDE, took its form in Persia. The piece now known as bishop in English originally represented an elephant in Persian chess games. The symbolically represented tusks of the elephant may have been misunderstood by Western craftsmen as being a representation of a bishop's mitre. The Spanish, Italian and French names, on the other hand, derive (via Arabic) from the Persian word for "elephant". And the German name of this piece means "runner".  --Lambiam 20:29, 6 August 2023 (UTC)