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Names of chess pieces in (con)langs

From:Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>
Date:Friday, March 24, 2006, 23:24
Have any of y'all decided on the names of chess pieces in
your conlangs?  I started working on those in gzb, but for
the bishop, in particular, I'm not sure a straight translation
from English is right.  Doesn't it have names in other languages
that don't translate as "bishop"?  Zamenhof's _Lingvaj Respondoj_
gives the names of chess pieces in German and Esperanto;
"Läufer" & "kuriero" seem to be the bishop (my German is scant).
The online German dictionary I checked gives "runner" for "Läufer",
with several less apparently relevant definions.

Neither "bishop" nor "runner" would yield anything concise
when rendered too straight into gzb; "hiqj-tla" is a general term for
bishops, priests and deacons and needs an adjective
or apposite noun to be specifically a bishop.  (I haven't settled
on a most customary way of expressing it -- I've tried
hiqj-tla-zxa (sacrament-professional-AUG),
hiqj-tla gym-tla (sacrament-professional lead-professional)
and some other variations.)  "to run" in gzb is "vxax-zox jxwy-box"
- to move(under one's own control) quickly.  Maybe
tu-vxax-jxwy -- agent-move-quick.  But Esperanto's
"kuriero" suggests "graxm-tla" (message-professional).

Are there other chess pieces whose names are
significantly different in languages other than English,
German and Esperanto?

Anyway, the other chess pieces are (so far)

paxnx		king (lord, sovereign; < Polish)
paxnx-sxy	queen (lord-feminine)
keq'baxl		knight (horse, < Spanish & Italian)
rix'max-nxul	rook (house-defense; rix'max < Malaysian, nxul < a priori)
six'dxyr-tla	pawn (fight-professional; roots are a priori)

Need terms for "check" and "checkmate", "castle" and "en passant".
"capture" is probably the general verb "taxnq-zox" (take away).
"checkmate" could be "dxaxn" (defeat/conquest).  Maybe "check"
could be "dxaxn txje", defeat-almost?

Part of me wants to name them in terms of how they move,
seeing as this is something of an engelang, but I haven't
figured out a concise way to do that.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/gzb.htm

Replies

Larry Sulky <larrysulky@...>
Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
Cian Ross <cian@...>
Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>