In the Surinamese telephonebook I have found two people who are named "Schaak", both living in Paramaribo. The only other meaning the word "schaken" has is to steal a bride. That habit is highly uncommon In Suriname.

If you look into a german phone directory there are quite a few people whose surname is "Schach". I don´t know if there is an origin not connected with chess.

There are even 4 people in the german rating list with this surname.

Oh, eleven! Thank you, Girkassa!

MNb wrote on 07/23/11 at 20:53:35:

Dear MNb, you are right, of course. There's always this number of 6.000 spoken languages around, but probably around a third of them is moribund, some of them might be "maintained" only because there is a "market" for them, i.e. some linguists who do research in them  .
In addition, many areas of vocabulary are prone to borrowing. Some core vocabulary like expressions for body parts, family relations, basic spatial and temporal concepts, traditional food etc. are not so likely to be borrowed, but in many (most?) cases a culture adopts a new (for them) concept, it will also adopt the words for that concept from the "giver". Chess terminology doesn't seem to be a basic concept in human cognition  .
So without knowing the language situation in Suriname, I guess most "indigenous" chess players would use the Dutch chess terms, or maybe the terms from one of the other languages with "established" chess terminology, as English, maybe Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi. (That might not hinder them to use their language's word for "horse" for a knight, for example.) Such a situation will probably hold for the vast majority of the world's languages, so that the original figure of 6.000 comes down to a few dozens.

Stefan Buecker wrote on 07/23/11 at 20:59:02:


I wonder if any German uses (Schach)Zabel at all, if (s)he is not talking about medieval chess? (How many do even know what it means?) Are you sure that the surname (or it's part) "Zabel" comes form the meaning "chess board" and not from the more general meaning "board"? Would be nice if there are family names related to chess!

Best regards,

Zwischenzugzwang

Immediately before posting, I've noticed your new message, Stefan, thank you. What do our anglophone chess friends mean - is this a "regular" expression? Are there other languages which can make a verb out of the nouns "queen" ("knight" [?], "rook" [??], "bishop" [???]) with the meaning "promotion to"?

MNb wrote on 07/18/11 at 21:27:48:


Interesting how a word can develop into different meanings in different languages. In Norwegian, "å løpe" unambigously means to run, so the literal translation of "løper" is "runner."

Hello Zwischenzugzwang,

it seems that in your original list of basic chess terms one term is missing: board or chess board. In German we have "Schachbrett" (chess board) or "Spielbrett" (lit. playing board), but more common is the short "Brett" (board). A "Brett" is usually made of wood, but it seems that we don't care anymore and use the same term for the plastic version. Must be similar in English, I guess. 

What's more interesting: in German we also have the old (now a bit antiquated) term "Zabel". It comes from Latin "tabula" (for playing board). Sometimes one hears the family name "Zabel", which indeed had its origin in the chess term. 

Googling for "Brett + Schach" delivers about 10-15 times more results than for the other terms.

Hello everybody!

First of all, thank you, Vass, for your Bulgarian contribution! Now we have some terminology of the following ten languages (+ some expressions from other languages): Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, English, German, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian, Russian, and Swedish (I hope I haven't missed anything!). So now there are only 5990 other languages left out there ... 

Some postings earlier (# 19) I asked about expressions for pawn promotion, but there was now reply, as far as I can see: Quote:

Maybe this time I'm more successful? 

This afternoon I stumbled on the word "chessically", and I wonder how well established it is. Some quick googling showed 3.830 entries, whereas "chesswise" has 45.600, and "chessy" has 7.810.000. I don't know how distorted these figures are, as "Chesswise" seems to be some sort of whatever application, and there's at least one place in France Marne-la-Vallée-Chessy which seems to generate a lot of entries. What "chessical" / "chessy" adjectives and adverbs are out there?

Best regards,

Zwischenzugzwang

For Zzz.. 
English:  Bulgarian:                        Russian:
Pawn     Пешка (peshka/pedestrian) Пешка (pedestrian)
Knight    Кон  (kon/horse)               Конь (horse)
Bishop    Офицер (military officer)    Слон (elephant)
Rook      Топ (top/cannon,gun)        Ладья (ferry/barge)
Queen    Дама (dama/lady)             Ферзь (vizir/general)
King       Цар (tsar/king)                 Король (king)

That's nice that we've finally some expressions from slave languages, thanks, thibdb13, Stigma and Smyslov_Fan!

Edit about one hour later: Sorry, of course I mean "Slavonic languages"!

Dear Vass, as you seem to be from (or at least: in) Bulgaria, maybe you could contribute the Bulgarian terms?

As Persian and Hindi were mentioned in the last posts, does anybody here know the modern chess terminologies (they might still equal the "old" ones) of these languages?

Alfil seems to be of Arabic origin, where al fīl is simply "the Elephant", and, as far as I know, fīl (without the definite article al) is also the word for "bishop" (in chess) in Modern Standard Arabic. Can anybody tell if that is correct? I wonder if some modern Arabic dialects have developed other expressions?

MNb wrote on 07/18/11 at 16:01:04:


The verb laufen in German is ambiguous, as it can both mean "to run" and "to walk". So answering the question "Do you go by car into town?" with "Nein, ich laufe.", "No, I laufe", doesn't mean that the speaker will "run" into town, but that (s)he will simply "walk". On the other hand, one can use laufen in contrast to gehen: "After he had 5 km gelaufen, he ging the rest of the distance", i.e. 5 km running, and then walking. But I think the nomen agentis, the noun denoting the "doer of the activity", is not ambiguos: A (Langstrecken)Läufer is somebody who runs (long distances), whereas a "walker" in sports is translated as Geher. The motion verbs in germanic languages seem somehow to be semantically unstable over time, at least the differences between English and German concerning the usage of these verbs are huge.
For the part of loper, somebody else has to answer your question.

I'll probably have no internet access over the next few days, so I wish everybody a nice week!

Zwischenzugzwang