In this video, from Spain, the participants refer to the Queen as “La Dama” and the Bishop as “El Alfil.” “La Dama” (“the Lady”) I get, but I’m lost on “El Alfil,” which was an actual chess piece at one time or another that has since been phased out. I’m also rather confused as to why the Spanish don’t just say their word for “bishop” (“El Obispo”).
Does Latin American Spanish use the same conventions?
Also, inasmuch as the action happens quickly and I don’t speak Spanish very well, I’m missing some context. Regardless, I keep hearing the word “elefante” in there, which is obviously “elephant” and I guess refers to the Rook?? Although in a later video from the same show the Rook is “Torre” (“Tower”). Or is the competitor’s proxy saying “Elefante-[number]” to refer to the squares, perhaps in an effort to avoid confusion between similar sounds in the way Spanish pronounces some of the letters between A-H?
I’ve always hear that the queen is la reina (the lady), but then I haven’t been a huge chess player, nor have I ever discussed chess pieces and their names with someone from Spain, so my take is as a non-player and the pieces named in Mexico. As for el Alifil, that does mean the bishop and that’s what I thought it was as well, so not sure what your issue is there. I’ve never heard the chess piece called el Obispo, which is, admittedly, another word for bishop.
It varies, as I’ve heard different terms used. Certainly, it depends on where one is in Latin America, but also your social strata, especially wrt how much actual Spanish (i.e. from Spain) exposure you have. I’m from a fairly poor family in Mexico, so my take is going to be different than one of the supposedly pure Spanish bloods in the big cities…folks who actually are taught to play games like chess.
NOTE: I Am Not A Chess Expert. I Also Do Not Speak Spanish.
Our modern game of chess derives from older games, probably dating back to the 7th Century on the Indian Subcontinent. Pieces and names for them have migrated through Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, and other languages and cultures before they wound up in modern English and Spanish.
What we now call the Bishop in English was at one time an elephant piece - pil in Persian. It became fil in Arabic (which lacks the “p” sound), and al-fil is “the elephant”. From there, it entered Spanish as “alfil” as a non-translated name for the piece. So, “el alfil” is “the chess-piece-known-in-English-as-the-Bishop” (or “the the elephant [bishop]”).
From what I understand, the Rook in Spanish is indeed “torre” (“tower”), not elephante. I have no idea what that would refer to. Maybe you’re mis-hearing something? As I said, though, I’m not a chess expert nor do I speak Spanish, so that could very well be a term I just don’t know.
[Moderating]
This is a factual question, but since it’s about a game, it’ll probably do better in the Game Room. Moving.
[Not moderating]
I’ve seen references to old chess sets where the rooks were mounted on elephants, presumably as a way to explain how castles were moving around.
If you look here, you’ll see the etymology of alfil: “Del ár. hisp. alfíl, este del ár. clás. fīl, y este del pelvi pīl ‘elefante’,” which might be translated as “From Arabic Spanish “alfil,” which comes from classical Arabic “fil,” which comes from Middle Persian “pil,” which means elephant."
In the video, though, it’s just a coincidence that there seems to be a relationship between “elefante” and “alfil,” because they’re using letters to refer to the positions on the board and words to represent the letters: “de de Dinamarca,” “e de elefante, “efe de Francia,” etc. (d as in Denmark, e as in elephant, f as in France, etc.)
Ah…the word I’m thinking is el alfil, not ‘el Alifil’…el alfil is the bishop. I actually haven’t ever heard the elephant thing…rook is el torre from my own experience. Makes sense, sort of, to think the towers were moved around by elphants though so I’d buy that.
I also am not even a good novice at chess, let alone an expert. And, while I do speak Spanish (the Mexican variety), I’m actually not literate in Spanish, ironically…I didn’t learn how to read and write until we moved to the US, so I learned that (sort of), not reading or writing in Spanish.
The explanation given for the ethymology of the Bishop (el alfil) is the one I had read before, I guess it is true. The Queen is refered to as la dama or la reina. The use is indiscriminate, I believe, but some expressions require one or the other: Queen’s gambit, for instance, is gambito de dama, not gambito de reina. At least not in Spain, I ignore whether there are different usages in South America. The King is el rey (evident), the Rook is la torre (the tower), the Knight is el caballo (the horse), the Pawn is el peón (also evident). The promotion is called coronar un peón (to crown a pawn), castling is enrocar, the capture en passant (“in passing”) is called capturar al paso. A draw in chess is called tablas. Stalemate is called rey ahogado (drowned king).
It may be relevant in this context before this becomes a EN-ES glossary on chess terms to point out that the game of chess came to Europe by way of the Arabs that conquered Spain: El Libro de los Juegos was a book commissioned by Alfonso X el Sabio (the Wise One, not bad as a moniker to be remembered by, is it?) that contains the earliest European treatise on chess, it was finished 1283. That explains the arab name of the Bishop, among other things.
Spanish speaking chess player from Latin America here
Pawn: Peón
Rook: Torre (Tower)
Knight: Caballo (Horse)
Bishop: Alfil (Weird etymology from arabic and persian)
Queen: Dama or Reina (Lady or Queen), advanced chess players use “Dama” because “Reina” starts with the same letter as “Rey” (king) and can be confused in the old notation (P4R (pawn to the king’s row 4) can be confused with P4D (pawn to the queen’s row 4))
King: Rey (King).
The names of pieces are standard in English!
Yes, there are people who mention horses and castles. But they are probably inexperienced at chess and just describing what the piece looks like to them.
Once you play or discuss chess regularly, you’ll use the correct names.
As an aside, it’s likely that Rook (usually an English bird) comes from ‘Rukh’, which is the Persian for ‘chariot’ - . since chariots move in straight lines (like Rooks.)
Also checkmate may have come from the Persian ‘Shah mat’, which means ‘the King is dead’.
Here are the names of chess pieces in various languages with their translations into English. The Bishop (“alfil” in Spanish) is “fou” (fool or jester) in French (old diagrams in French books often show the Bishop with a jester’s cap rather than a bishop’s mitre), “слон” (elephant) in Russian, and “Läufer” (runner) in German.
The piece we know as a “Rook” was in fact originally a chariot.
Chess descends from an Indian abstract war game, dating back to at least the 6th Century, that used pieces to represent the types of military units then in use in the Indian Subcontinent - infantry (pawns), chariots (rooks), horse cavalry (knights), and war elephants (bishops).
The game was adopted and adapted by Persians, then Arabs, and then Europeans. Both the game itself and the pieces and their names evolved as they were being transmitted across cultures and centuries. The shape of the pieces became increasingly simplified, stylized, and abstracted. By c. 1200, when something pretty similar to modern chess was being played in Europe, the pieces they were using bore little resemblance to the original Indian pieces.
By 1200 or so, the original Indian war elephant had been simplified, stylized, and abstracted to unrecognizability in European chess sets. It was usually a simple piece with a single or double forked top (probably representing an elephant’s tusks). French players thought the double-forked piece looked like a fool’s cap, and started calling it “le fou”. English players thought the single-forked piece looked like a bishop’s mitre, and started calling it “the bishop.” French and English chess set makers followed the naming conventions, and started making the pieces more closely resemble their names, as did illustrators.
The ancestor of chess (probably) entered Western Europe through the contact between Arabs and proto-Spaniards in the Iberian peninsula. It (probably) came separately to Russia through the Silk Road. So while Western European players had abstracted pieces that they applied local colloquial terms to (“fool”, “bishop”, “runner”), Russians apparently got pieces more closely resembling their Indian roots, or at least kept translated versions of some of the names, and retained the “elephant”.
Hm, the “elephant” chesspiece reference I’m specifically remembering was from one of James Fenimore Cooper’s books, and I think that the learned character in the scene describes the elephant as being a rook, but it’s possible that I misinterpreted or misremembered it.
(Natty Bumppo, of course, has no idea what either chess or elephants are, and describes the piece as a “beast with two tails”, and concludes that it must be some sort of pagan idol)
Not at “one time”, even today. Chess is alive and well today and Indian languages have much of the original names. As a kid growing up, it was instinctive to know that an Elephant (rook) - only goes straight because it is a big heavy animal. The horse (knight) has the 2.5 jump of the horse and the Camel (Bishop) goes sideways like in a desert / mountain.
I did not know the english names of the chess pieces till about I was a teenager.
Upon re-reading gdave’s post, it seems I’m wrong and Chronos is right. At some point in history, Indians switched the elephant from (what we now call) the bishop to (what we now call) the rook (this replaced the earlier conception of the the rook as a chariot). For the bishop, they replaced the elephant with a camel.
