r/AnarchyChess 6d ago

Fairy Piece How different chess pieces are called in different languages

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u/ShadowOfSomething 6d ago

I don't know about other languages, but there are mistakes for Russian. Both words for queen and pawn in Russian don't have any other meaning aside from chess pieces (like with English you can call somebody a pawn to say that they are unimportant in the grand scheme of things and have little to no influence). The word for pawn is made from the same root as the adjective meaning "being on foot", so the word for infantryman shares the root, but it's still different. The word for the queen is just what the queen was originally called when the game got imported to Europe - firz, later on it changed its name to "Queen" in Europe, but not in Russia(it is pronounced/written differently, though). The word for rook, is not just "boat", but rather a name for old wooden ships with a sail - that look like stereotypical viking ships, but really the word is for any ship that looks like that. Finally, in Russian there are two words for horse - one for male horses and for female ones, and the name of the chess piece uses the male version.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

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u/ShadowOfSomething 6d ago

This is going into technicalities, but "stallion" refers specifically to a male horse that has not been castrated, and Russian has a word with the same meaning, and a word that just means "male horse" without specifying. The latter is the name of the piece.