Re: Names of chess pieces in (con)langs

In the original game which eventually became Chess, only the king had
a name which literally translates as the modern English name (raja).
The "queen" was the "mantri" (counsellor); a "knight" was called
simply a "horse" ("asva"), the "rook" was called a "ratha"
("chariot"), and a "pawn" was called a "pedati" ("soldier").  The
piece we call the "bishop" was a "gaja" ("elephant").

In the Chinese descendant (Xiangqi), the horse and elephant still have
literal translations of their original names.

The French name Larry mentioned, "fou", comes from the older "fol",
from the Arabic name "fil", which means "elephant"; it was sometimes
called an "alfil" (Arabic for "the elephant"), even in English.

The English name is based on the appearance of the piece.  At the
time, it had two sharp protrusions at the top; these were intended to
be the elephant's tusks, but the English interpreted them as a
bishop's mitre.  As far as I know, Icelandic (biskup) and Portuguese
(bispo) are the only other major languages that use translations of
the English name, although the old German name for it (der Alte) means
"sage", which could have a related origin.  (The modern German name is
"Laufer" = Dutch"Loper", which mean "courier").

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