Where does the word "chess" come from? | How was the word "check" created?

Where does the word "chess" come from?

Have you ever wondered where the word "chess" comes from? Not surprisingly, the history of the English name chess all starts with a king: the Persian shah! Today, we pronounce that word in English as "sha," since even though we have the "h" sound in English (like in happy), we don't pronounce “h” at the ends of words—but other languages have different rules, and in Persian, you pronounce the "h" at the end of shah.

The Persian word was adopted into Arabic as the name of the king playing piece, and when the game made it to Europe, shah evolved in 2 ways. First, its meaning expanded to refer to the whole game and not just the one piece. Second, it underwent an important sound change. In many European languages, the "h" at the end of shah was replaced with a similar sound also made at the back of the throat: the "k" sound. What was once shah became more like shak, and this evolved into the older French words eschec (check) and eschecs (plural name for all the pieces). The plural name is the one that was borrowed into English as chess!

Other languages got the name of the game from a different source: the Sanskrit name chaturanga. Today, this word can be used for a whole category of chess-like board games that evolved their own forms in cultures around the world. Chaturanga might also sound familiar to the yogis among you—it's the same word as the four-limbed yoga plank pose! 

In both cases, chaturanga means "four parts" or "four limbs," and the chess meaning traces back to the 4 military branches in India. (More on those below.) Chaturanga was adopted into Persian, then Arabic, and then Spanish and Portuguese, due to the long history of contact between Arabic and Spanish and Portuguese. In each new language, the pronunciation of the word changed slightly to fit the language's sound patterns, eventually yielding Modern Standard Arabic شطرنج (shattaranj), Spanish ajedrez, and Portuguese xadrez. 

Putting sounds in check

The goal of the game is to corner the king (formerly, the shah), and in Persian the expression was "to stump (or surprise) the king": shah mat. The final -h in this phrase also became pronounced as a "k" sound in French, and then in English we borrowed the word as checkmate—the shah is cornered!

Other sound changes can be seen in other languages. Not all languages have a "sh" sound, so some languages use "s" instead of "sh" in their words for chess, check, and checkmate!

You can see the similarities of the names chess, check, and checkmate when you look at languages from around the world.