Look, look! Spain having alfil meaning elephant and Italy having alfiere meaning standart-bearer (is that a common English word?) great! Which one came for the other? Or are they oddly unrelated?
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
216 points (97.8% liked)
Map Enthusiasts
5002 readers
4 users here now
For the map enthused!
Rules:
-
post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
-
be nice
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The Spanish word is borrowed from Arabic fil (sounds sort of like "feel") = elephant (al fil = the elephant). Hebrew cognate is pil, sounds sort of like the English word "peel". Italian is unrelated, I think.
~~Kowalski~~ Wazowski, analysis!
I think it's supposed to be "standard-bearer", which (at least in my part of the world) would more likely be called a "flag bearer" since more people are familiar with the word "flag" over "standard" when used in that sense of the word.
Also, it looks like it was originally called alfil (according to this Wikipedia article? Whereas the Italian "alfiere" came from a different Spanish word meaning "second lieutenant"?
This heathenous map adds basque and catalan, welsh, scottish gaelic, but somehow erases breton and occitan.
Based on a pass with Google Translate from "The bishop is a chesspiece in chess", I think that Occitan is l'evesque and Breton eskob.
Evesque would be bishop, yea... I'm surprised it doesn't share the french word (jester)
Thanks :)
Spelling mistake in luxembourgish. :(
should be "Leefer"
Using my phones translator function on this image, this is what comes up.
What on Earth is a "teaspag" that it put as the Scottish one?
(Although I zoomed at a different rate and tried again and then it read "bishops")
Teaspag is Irish Gaelic for bishop
Ai is reading the Gaelic poorly and misinterpreting it? Makes sense. But it supposedly translated words into English for me, not Irish.
So I started imagining that "teaspag" is is like a certain type of spag bol the Scots have with their tea.
I dunno how it translates french “fou” into “new”. “fou” means mad/crazy.
It mixed up umlauts on Hungarian:
Futóis the chess piece, it means runner.Fűtőmeans heater. It's strange it hallucinated 3 extra accents.
Rikis was a name for an Old Prussian or Lithuanian leader or a noble person.
Most of these kind of make sense, then you get stock of a gun
Probably originally something offensive that sounded similar in that language, and was forced to be changed to be more civilized.
Elephant
Also 'elephant' in chaturanga, the game that was the ancestor of chess, and several variants.
Elephant
We got a shooter (Czech)
didn't know the seas call the bishop a spear
🇨🇭, Zurich: En Loifäär
(I bet every canton has at least own version 😝)
Great map but I don't trust the source since it cannot even be bothered to correctly mention that some languages several names for pieces. I am Slovenian and have never heard anyone refer to the bishop piece as lovec (hunter). It was always tekač or laufar (runner).
Laufar sounds like a loan word from German Läufer
Because it is.
We have hundreds if not thousands of deformed and abused 'loanwords' from german in the northern part of the country.
Stock of a gun sounds like an insult
I get Spain, but why is it that so often with these maps Eastern Europe shares the same word as the Arab world?
I get Spain, but why is it that so often with these maps Eastern Europe shares the same word as the Arab world?
Ottoman empire ruled the eastern Europe for some centuries and Ottoman language was a mixture of Turkish, Persian and Arabic.
but i assume that the elephant is Indian influence rather than Arabic. IIRC, that's also where the game is conceived
edit, yes, it literally is an elephant ☞ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturanga