Not surprisingly we don't find any elephants in the European chess sets. Get the most out of every pawn Learn the best way to use your pawns to help you win the game Simon Williams, the Ginger GM demonstrates the best uses of. Rook then really points to the Oriental origins of chess, while medieval northern Europeans put their own interpretations on the other pieces, effectively naturalizing them. In English, we don't speak of a 'tower' as Germans and Scandinavians do (although the old-fashioned term 'castle' persists among the older generations), but of a 'rook' which has no etymological value in English as it is originally a loanword from Persian (meaning 'chariot'), via Arabic and French. In French, the bishop is neither a bishop or a runner but a 'fou' (fool/jester). Even the Queen is known as a 'lady' (and not Königin/drottning, as one might expect). Pawn and Bauer/bonde have some overlap but are still distinct conceptual entities. Names of chess pieces are King, Queen, Rook, Bishop, Knight and Pawn. So the knight was not a horseman but a 'jumper', and the bishop was not a man of the cloth but a 'runner'. Let’s understand the names of chess pieces. Germans (and slightly later presumably Scandinavian speakers, probably mediated via German) must when the game arrived on their shores have seen the pieces of the newly introduced game and associated them with different things than did speakers of English. It's interesting how the various pieces have been named and conceptualized in different languages. Rook: German = Turm 'tower' Swedish = torn 'tower'Īs you can see, Scandinavian (here represented by Swedish) tends to follow the German model, rather than the English-language one. After that chess reached Persia and from there it reached Arab. The game was inspired by the battle and in fact, the chess pieces were named on the basis of four parts of the army: elephants, chariots, horsemen, and foot soldiers.

The earliest systems of notation used lengthy narratives to describe each move these gradually evolved into more compact notation. At that time, the game was called ‘chaturanga’ which means four limbs or four parts. Chess notation is used in chess literature, and by players keeping a record of an ongoing game. Queen: German = Dame 'lady' Swedish = dam 'lady' Chess notation systems are used to record either the moves made or the position of the pieces in a game of chess. Pawn: German = Bauer 'farmer, peasant' Swedish = bonde 'farmer, peasant' Knight: German = Springer 'jumper' Swedish = springare 'jumper'īishop: German = Läufer 'runner' Swedish = löpare 'runner'

I can only speak for German and Scandinavian, but, in contrast to English, the names of the following pieces are:

All chess pieces names