Crazy bishops

My son is learning French, and being also chess-obsessed, wanted to learn the French words for various chess terms which he asked ChatGPT to provide.

I don’t trust ChatGPT or any other generative AI to provide accurate answers. After all, it has provided such “delightful” knowledge as:

Google AI–provided answer to “tallest ferris wheel in the world” which confidently claims: “The tallest Ferris wheel in the world is the Eiffel Tower.”

so I made a point of looking over the answers to see whether they were accurate.

They were, but what caught my attention was that the French word for the bishop was fou

Now, I only speak French as a joke but thanks to Charles Trenet, I know that fou means madman. Was this a case of post-revolutionary French anti-clericalism?

Nope.

It turns A picture of an elephant chess piece (sourced from Wikipedia)out that while spelled identically, the chess piece name comes from Arabic via Spanish and ultimately means “elephant” referring to the original piece that occupied the bishop’s place on the board (although it had more restricted movement than a bishop). The Spanish name for the piece, alfil is more recognizable both as having an Arabic root and as being connected to the English word “elephant.”

Just thought I’d share this little bit of wordy delight.


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