Edward Winter (in
http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/earliest.html ) found an early [the earliest?] mention of "isolated pawn" in 1810. Winter traces back
"Isolani" to a game annotated by
Leonhardt in
Hamburger Nachrichten of 21 August 1910. So this first occurence was in a German text. Nimzowitsch later used "isolani" in his (English!)
My System, 1929. With some frequency you find English chess authors reject this term as "foreign" and prefer the good ol' "isolated pawn".
Quote:[...] I'll translate roughly what the "Kluge" (a highly acknowledged etymological dictionary of German, 24th edition, Walter de Gruyter 2002, p. 768) has to say about it:
"The term Rochade was introduced in the 16th century, coming from the term for "rook" (Middle High German roch, from Middle Dutch roc, which is derived from Old French roc, which is from Spanish roque. [...]
I am somewhat puzzled by this explanation in "Kluge 2002", quoted by Zzz in reply #39. Yes, our castling (the move!) appears in the 16th century. We know it for sure for the famous Italian players Polerio, Paolo Boi, Leonardo di Cutri, in the second half of the 16th century. But they used a different term ("salta...") for it, nothing based on the root "roc" or "roque"!
Van der Linde in
Geschichte und Litteratur des Schachspiels (1874, p. 359) wrote about the Rochade:
Quote:Ihre Entstehungszeit fällt für Frankreich um 1500—1560, Italien 1512—1561, Oesterreich 1577, Spanien (und Portugal) 1561—1597, England 1562—1614, Deutschland (nebst Holland, die skandinavischen Länder u. s. w.) in das 18. Jahrhundert (vgl. meine Geschichte der Rochade, Polerio S. 1 ff.). Obgleich die Prioritätsfrage zwischen Frankreich und Italien sich nicht urkundlich entscheiden lässt, so darf doch aus inneren Gründen geschlossen werden, dass die normale Rochade italienischen Ursprungs ist. Was man jetzt die „italienische" oder aucli „freie" d. h. gesetzlose Rochade nennt, wobei die Plätze für Thurm und König willkürlich gewählt werden, ist ganz sicher eine spätere Entartung. Dass die grossen Meister des italienischen Schach in der zweiten Hälfte des XVI. Jahrhunderts ausschliesslich regelmässig rochirt haben, ist ein feststehendes Resultat der neuen Forschung.
Translation (Google):
Quote:The genesis [of castling] falls to France for 1500-1560, Italy 1512-1561, Austria 1577, Spain (and Portugal) 1561-1597, England 1562-1614, Germany (along with Holland, the Scandinavian countries, etc.) in the 18th Century (see my story of castling, Polerio p. 1 et seq.) Although the question of priority between France and Italy can not be decided by a first documented mention, so it may be inferred from internal evidence that the normal castling is of Italian origin. What is now called the "Italian" or "free" i.e. lawless castling, randomly selecting the places for king and tower, is certainly a later degeneration. That the great masters of Italian chess in the second half of the XVI Century exclusively castled regularly is an established result of the new research.
But here Van der Linde has written about the genesis
of the move, not the term "Rochade". The "Kluge" 2002 apparently took the genesis of the move
for the genesis of the term. The linguistic situation seems complicated, however. For example, the Italian verb "arrocarsi" was originally used for 1-step movements of the king in the direction of his rook. A big difference to the Rochade!
In his
Das Schachspiel des 16. Jahrhunderts, Van der Linde had slightly favoured France as developing castling (again: the move! not the term), hinting at the Göttingen manuscript (1490 or so) with its French roots. But in the later source
Geschichte... quoted above, he is more inclined that the move was developed (again: the move! not the term) in Italy. Some old sources only described the rule for the move, without explicitly giving it a name. Polerio wrote "salta di Rè all' ordinario". So I don't know when a name based on roc or a similar root (verb or noun, in some country's version) appeared, and whether it happened in France or Italy or elsewhere.
Kluge is, in my opinion, wrong, when he writes: "The term Rochade was introduced in the 16th century, ..." Rochade, the German term, was a late, late link in that long chain (maybe 18th century). I doubt that even "arrocare" or arrocarsi or a French term can be found
for our modern 0-0 in a source as early as in the 16th century. In the 17th century, perhaps.
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Chess terminology worldwide (Read 76244 times)
