Mark Thompson wrote on Thu, Jul 10, 2003 12:57 AM UTC:
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.