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The Seeping Switchers. An army for Chess with Different Armies based on pieces that change color when they move.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Charles Gilman wrote on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 07:54 AM UTC:
Well that's a considerable critque of Man and Beast. Many of the names do indeed date from before I knew as many existing usages as I do now, and I try to bear stability in mind over so comprehensive a list. Thus I shelved the Bolyar extrapolations with Ajax ones becausde teh latter looked a lot more accessible, but I would not want to that too frequently or with too large a group of pieces. I am currently considering how replacing Kinbaba with the pre-existing Pasha of which I recently read might be reflected in replacing similarly abstract names. Its distinguishing feature seems to be that it has one-step and two-steps moves in exactly the same the direction. On this basis I could clear out Kinchick, Dudbuck, Dimp, Barlock, Battler, Arcbuck, and Aimplala if I can find enough Pasha-themed names.
	Regarding reuse of names, many names have been used in multiple ways quite outside any ideas of mine, I have to decide which is the most useful. For eample the Raumschach usage for Unicorn us quoted far more widely than the same uses for any square-board piece. Therefore it makes sense to ignore the usages that has not gained popularity - in games rather than problems - and I see no problem of doing the same even where there is no popular usage at all. Thus no piece is widely known as a Pegasus so I suggest it for a Bent piece. Where a name is in wide use for a piece but does not inspire me - Centaur, Lance - I avoid reusing it for another piece.
	Regarding obscure and untranslateable names, this is true of some of the less widely-used pieces. However all the names in the first page are straightforward names. Likewise most of the Divergent ones, ebven if some are inspired by compound words like Pawnbroker which are unlikely to work in other languages. Many of my puns are merely extrapolations from pre-existing puns such as Sexton, Waffle, and Alibaba and I have tried to make a many as possible meaningful words even if the pun is lost in translation. It was as for reasons of translation that I dropped using Dame for a hex-prism-specific piece, but when names translate so patchily even among the FIDE pieces this can only be so big a factor. Some prefixed words will survive translation - Silverbishop could certainly translate into German as Silberlaufer.