How Did Chess Become “Chess”

Chess is being played for almost 1500 years ago with different forms. Event though its original foundation is not certain, its believed that its originated to India. At this point chess had less pieces to play with and there are some texts referring to a “chesslike” games.

Earliest known abstract chess set, Persia, 9th c. Source

In India the game was known as chaturanga which means “four divisions” : infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and chariotry, represented by the pieces that would evolve into the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook, respectively. Then chess became know in the Persia and the name chaturanga became chatrang then became shatranj. Rules started to develop more and, players began saying “ Shāh” while attacking to most valuable piece “king”. And when the Shāh was unable to avoid the attack they said “Shāh Māt!” which means “king is helpless” for Persian and is still used to this date in Islamic cultures.

After Islamic domination of Persians, there were some changes in how chess was pronounces around the world. Some of them are in the table Below.

Chess in Other Languages

There are two common theories why these changes occurred:

1- From the exclamation “check” or “checkmate” as it was pronounced in various languages.

2- From the first chessmen known of in Western Europe (except Iberia and Greece) being ornamental chess kings brought in as curios by Muslim traders.

As mentioned, chaturanga was earliest form of chess and has two fundamental features that all chess games also have. First one is different pieces have different values and powers, second one is winning the game is depended on only one piece, “king”. Game was winnable by “checkmate” which is capturing the king or by “stalemate” which is capturing all other pieces other than king, leaving the king alone as name suggest “bare king”.

Moves of the pieces in the early chess were:

King: one square to all ways (as now)

Queen: just one square diagonally

Bishop:

• In Persia: exactly two squares diagonally, but it was able to jump a piece (like knight as now).
• In India some of former types: exactly two squares sideways or front-back , but it was able to jump a piece.
• In Southeast Asia: one square diagonally, or one square forwards.

Knight: All possible ways with an L shape (as now)

Pawn: only one square forward, captures as now, one square diagonally and was only able to promote to queen when reached to the end of the board.