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Jean-Louis Cazaux wrote on Sat, Sep 2, 2023 07:15 PM UTC in reply to Bob Greenwade from Fri Sep 1 01:48 PM:

  • There are some dislexic errors: it should be Sheherazade and not Sheherezade; Sheik not Shiek.

  • BnEm is right. King in Arabic is pronounced Malik. Less frequently, I had also seen Malek. Never Melek. However it is true that for semitic languages (such as Arabic, Hebrew,...) what is important are the consonants. They make the root MLK. The vowels are even not noted in current Arabic writing. But if you have no strong argument, I would write Malik.

  • Yes, I had shortened Snaketongue to Snake for my Fantastic XIII game. I am the only guilty, Eric had kept the long form. The original name refers to the move pattern, but I prefered to use an animal's name instead of an organ.

  • BnEm is right again. The word Pawn, Pion in French, derives from Latin Pedes. Sanskrit has not transmitted any word for the chess nomenclature of the pieces. Most of the nomenclature derives from Middle Persian, then Arabic. Piyada was the word in Middle Persian, also designating a foot soldier. The root is Indoeuropean as HG said. Latin, Persian (and Sanskrit) belong to that language tree. The Latin word does not derive from the Persian one because what has been transmitted to Christians was the Arabic word (Baidaq). Europeans named that piece a foot soldier by understanding what it was in the army (as they did for the King). It was natural to see a foot soldier in the front line of the chess army, whatever the language.


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