H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Apr 11, 2020 04:20 AM EDT:
We have to blame Ralph Betza for hijacking the name Aanca, and assign it to the bent slider that first makes a W step and then continues outward like B. Unfortunately this new meaning of Griffon / Aanca became so well settled that it will be difficult to eradicate. There was a discussion about this in the comments on Team-Mate Chess (which also features a Betza Aanca).
Note that such a confusion is not unique: the Spanish word for a Bishop is Alfil, but in English Alfil is used in the original sense of the Shatranj piece. It will be even harder to make the Spanish Chess community see the error of their ways, and make them drop their erroneous use of the word Alfil.
My conclusion was that the simplest solution is to just accept that chess men have different names in different languages, which are not always translation of each other (e.g. Bishop - Runner - Elephant - Fool - Counselor), and that this can also be the case for unorthodox pieces. That way Griffon would be the English name for the piece that the Spanish call Aanca, while Aanca would be abused in English to dscribe the Betza piece, similar to how the Spanish abuse the word Alfil to describe a Bishop.
We have to blame Ralph Betza for hijacking the name Aanca, and assign it to the bent slider that first makes a W step and then continues outward like B. Unfortunately this new meaning of Griffon / Aanca became so well settled that it will be difficult to eradicate. There was a discussion about this in the comments on Team-Mate Chess (which also features a Betza Aanca).
Note that such a confusion is not unique: the Spanish word for a Bishop is Alfil, but in English Alfil is used in the original sense of the Shatranj piece. It will be even harder to make the Spanish Chess community see the error of their ways, and make them drop their erroneous use of the word Alfil.
My conclusion was that the simplest solution is to just accept that chess men have different names in different languages, which are not always translation of each other (e.g. Bishop - Runner - Elephant - Fool - Counselor), and that this can also be the case for unorthodox pieces. That way Griffon would be the English name for the piece that the Spanish call Aanca, while Aanca would be abused in English to dscribe the Betza piece, similar to how the Spanish abuse the word Alfil to describe a Bishop.