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It's endlessly fascinating how culture, religion and even language influence stylistic choices, even though Chess is a purely abstract game. The obvious ones:
by qsort 13d ago
It's endlessly fascinating how culture, religion and even language influence stylistic choices, even though Chess is a purely abstract game.
The obvious ones: in Western sets the king has a cross on top, and Islamic traditions only use abstract shapes. But I wonder if the "usual" designs aren't at least somewhat influenced by the English language specifically. Bishops have a stylized miter and Rooks are a tower with crenellations, but e.g. in Russian Bishop is "elephant" and Rook is "boat". Even in many other Western European languages "Bishop" as in the piece is not the same as bishop as in the religious office, e.g. "fou" in French, "alfil" in Spanish, "Laufer" in German.
- neurosock 13d agoThe reason I hate chess is exactly the bishop symbol. I cannot explain it but I just can stand it. The idea on my mind of a bishop in war. I wish future generations will go back to the elephant as symbol internationally.
- amelius 13d agoWhat feels more off to me is why does the king have a cross? And why does a religion use the murder weapon of its messiah as its main logo? What if He was killed by a rock or a rifle or a guillotine? What would the king be carrying on his head? Something is __very__ off here ...
- WJW 13d ago1. Because many ancient monarchs claimed they had divine backing as the basis of their right to rule. A ruler wearing religious symbols strengthens that association. Chess kings from non-christian countries don't have crosses but go with other symbolism. 2. Because the most famous miracle performed by Jesus is that the crucification didn't stick: he rose from the dead after a few days and ascended to heaven not much later. So the cross is not so much a murder weapon as a callback to the central promise of christianity: that believing will grant you eternal life in Heaven after you die. It should be noted that early christians didn't really use the cross as a symbol btw, that came much later.
- amelius 13d ago> he rose from the dead after a few days and ascended to heaven not much later. So he wasn't murdered but then still died? This makes it all much clearer :)
- deleted 13d ago[deleted]
- ycombinete 13d agoIt's only a Bishop in a small number of cultures, and is still called Elephant more often than not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_(chess)#Name_translations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_(chess)#Name_translatio...
- patates 13d agoIn Turkish, the bishop is also called "fil" (elephant).