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I'd never questioned it before now, but ... How come the towers move? Who had that idea?
The jesters moving diagonally because they're whimsical I guess but the towers are quite odd.
jesters? they're bishops...
Sorry. Did a direct translation of the French name without thinking.
well, til!
And in German they're "Runners"
I'll add Spanish! "Alfil", taken from arabic "(al-)fil", taken from persian "pil", meaning "the elephant", since at some point in the past the piece was, evidently, an elephant.
I would have figured Germany would have been the one that changed whatever it was before to bishops in the medieval times on account of how important bishops were for the king/emperor's military.
Potato potato
You may look a bit beyond the edge of the anglophone world.
well in my language they're "runners" so i guess i should have thought a bit harder there...
The rook was initially a chariot.
Okay since nobody did a serious answer, here we go:
tl;dr: its a translation/interpretation error.
The first documented forms of chess are all "war machines" of their time the tower was a Charioteer.
When chess hits Europe someone translated charioteer with tower. Idk why, maybe because the used figures looked like a tower.
And a charioteer move on a battlefield would be a storming through everything in one direction.
I kinda wish we'd kept the name chariot. It sounds more epic.
Definetly.
Towers are made of stone