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Piece names[Subject Thread] [Add Response]

Mark Thompson wrote on Wed, Jul 9, 2003 08:57 PM EDT:

Personally, I prefer names that are 'real' nouns, but chosen with as much
logic as possible. For instance, a Queen isn't called a Rook-Bishop, so I
feel a Marshall shouldn't be called a Rook-Knight. The room this leaves
for logic isn't very great, but I'd be inclined to give, for instance,
names suggesting greater importance, authority, or strength to pieces that
are more powerful: for example, 'Empress' would be a reasonable name for
Q+N, but not for (say) B+N. I would give clerical names to pieces whose
chief move is diagonal, such as 'Priest' to a one-step diagonal mover
(um, that's a Ferz? or an Alfil? I can never remember). I like Cardinal
for B+N, and would use Archbishop for a Bishop with a one-step orthogonal
move. Animal names are well reserved for leaping pieces like Knights,
Camels, Zebras, etc.

But the problem with all this is that there seems to be no way to get
everyone to agree to use the same terms, and some pieces already have
several different names that each have considerable tradition behind them.

John Lawson wrote on Wed, Jul 9, 2003 11:13 PM EDT:

I think the best approach may depend on how many different pieces and
movement types you use.  One idea may be to use adjectives that are 
mnemonic.  For instance, I am playtesting an unpublished variant of Falcon
Chess with Peter Aronson in which the Falcon move is combined with other
powers.  When an otherwise normal piece also has the Falcon move, the
adjective 'winged' is added to its name.  If there were no more than
four things combined together, a 'Winged Roving Leaping Whatever' might
be easier to remember.
Ralph Betza has taken the approach, in some variants, of trying to
arbitrarily arrange his funny notation to be pronouncable, with mixed
results.  Similarly, you could assign an open syllable to each combining
part, and form nonsense words that would at least be precise and
pronouncable.  So a 'Winged Roving Leaping Whatever' might be a
'WheeRoLee Whatever' or a 'WheeRoLeeWha'.

Robert Shimmin wrote on Thu, Jul 10, 2003 01:03 AM EDT:

When talking about piece names, I think it's important to separate naming
a piece for including it in a game vs. naming a piece for talking about
the theory of pieces.  In a game, the piece should probably be named to
fit the feel of the game, if it has a theme, or otherwise establish
something logical sounding that helps compare the piece to pieces with
well-known names. (I had a partial game that included a straight+crooked
bishop and called it the inquisitor; the idea was later scrapped because
it's hard to use a superqueen-class piece that's still colorbound, but I
digress.)  The battle to keep the same names for the same piece between
games was lost before it began, and isn't particularly important anyway. 
The best names are both aesthetic and mnemonic.

When talking about the theory of pieces, the name is unimportant, because
most of the time you'll end up using a shorthand notation anyway.

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