Chess Pieces for Beginners: How they move, how they were named, and where they originate

A lot of people love the game of chess, however, a lot of those people don't know its history of it. Especially the history of the pieces. What are the pieces? How were they named? How do they move? Those are the questions we are answering today. This blog is meant for beginners, but experienced players can also read along.

Quick backstory: I'm a beginner. I'm awful at chess. But, I understand the pieces and I understand history. I'm using that knowledge to make an article that can hopefully help people, whether they are better or worse than I am in chess.

Pawn

The pawn is the most basic and weakest piece in chess. It moves up the board, one square at a time. Except for the first time it moves. Then it can move two squares up. And when there is a piece above it, either to the left or the right, it can eat it by moving diagonally. It can't move or eat pieces going straight up.

The only time the pawn gets complicated is during En Passant and Pawn Promotion, but there are lessons here on Chess.com for that.

In a bunch of languages, "pawn" means foot soldier or farmer. In Sanskrit, it was called "Padati" which again, means foot soldier.

Rook

The rook is a piece that looks like a little castle on the four corners of the board. It can move up and down vertically or side to side horizontally, across the entire board. Don't confuse this piece with the move of castling, in which the rook and king switch positions. The rook was originally called "Ratha" in Sanskrit. The means 'chariot'. When chess was introduced in Europe, it was called the 'Rocco' which translates to tower.

Knight

The knight is usually the piece set up next to the rook. It can move in the shape of an L, as you can see in the diagram below. The knight is the only piece that can hop over other pieces on the board. An alternate name for this piece is simply the horse, because it looks like a horse. Or if you watch GothamChess, you call it the horse.

The knight was simply known as the "horse" in India and Arabs. When Chess reached Europe, it was renamed to the knight, because Europeans were unfamiliar with the horse. Pretty interesting how that just stuck.

Bishop

The next piece over is the bishop. This piece can move up and down diagonally. There is one light-square bishop and one dark-square bishop. As you can imagine, each one can only move to that color square. You can identify this piece because of the cut in the top of it. This represents the miter, a hat that was worn by church bishops.

The bishop was originally named "fil" meaning elephant. The piece was then later known as the bishop because people in England noticed the resemblance of the miter on top. 

Queen

The queen is the most powerful piece in chess, to put it simply. The queen is placed next to the king and is the one with the crown on top. It can move straight up, straight down, diagonally up, and diagonally downwards. It is worth nine material points, the most of any piece. That just means it's valued the highest.

The queen was originally named "Mantri" which then turned into "Firzan" in Indian. This meant wise man. That didn't translate when it was brought to Europe. It was then called "lady" there, that's it. Then later, lady was translated to Queen. It sounds a little more grand.

King

Lastly, you have the King. The King is not necessarily the most powerful piece is chess, but it is the most important. The goal of the game is to make sure this piece is not attacked or eaten. Otherwise, if your king has nowhere to move without being directly attacked, it will result in a checkmate, which means you have lost the game. The King can move one space up, down, left, right, or on the diagonals. 

Let's take this back a step. Chess originated in India in the 7th century AD. From there, it spread to Persia and to the Muslim world. In the 15th century, it reached Europe. This is where a lot of renaming and piece redesigns took place because of translation and language barriers. Pretty much every piece changed in some way, as we've covered so far, but the king stayed the same. Since the beginning, the king was the king. In every language and every country, the word for this piece translated to the same monarch status: the king.

That's it. That's how pieces were named, originated, and how they moved. Theres a lot of rich history in chess, and I think this article here incoorperates a lot of that cool history, just with the pieces alone. Thanks for reading!