The rook is the only chess piece whose name stretches back to the very origin of the game. This is somewhat fitting, as the rules governing this piece (with the exception of castling) are unchanged since the game was developed in ancient India. This provides an opportunity to focus on why words copied from another language sometimes sound very different than the original. Along the way, we will also be able to trace the history of the game of chess from India, through the Middle East and into Europe.
And even discover where the castle shape came from.
It is important to remember that chess, like such games as backgammon or beer pong, was not invented all at once. Its ancestor was an Indian game called “chaturanga,” which meant four arms, presumably because it represented the four branches of an ancient military: foot soldiers, calvary, war elephants and the chariots. It is the last branch that is the ancestor of the modern rook. The Sanskrit word for chariot is “rath” (and of course you remember that the TH in Sanskrit is pronounced like the T in “tip” not the TH in “thin”).
Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, and “rath” is part of the common heritage it shares with the languages of Europe. For instance, the German word for wheel is “Rad.” Medieval English criminals were also executed on a wheel-shaped torture device known as a “rat,” which comes from the same root.
When most people in India were playing chaturanga, however, they were probably not speaking the formal, sacred Sanskrit, just as we will rarely speak like we're about to meet the Queen of England when B.S.ing around a poker table. In this more informal variety (called Prakrit), “rath” was pronounced with a breathy sound at the end: “roh.”
Now, when people pick up a foreign word, they rarely pronounce it exactly as it would be (unless they are bilingual or just giant douchebags). This is called loanword adaptation and explains why nobody rolls their R's when they order a burrito from Taco Bell (unless, as above, they are douchebags). The exact details of loanword adaptation are not fully understood, but they explain how “roh” became “rook” as it was passed from language to language.
The medieval Persians took the idea of chaturanga from India, and developed a game called shatranj. In this game, the chariot piece was called a “rukh,” a word that also has a breathy sound at the end (but a little more phlegm, as in the Scottish “loch”). When the Arabs spread the game across the Middle East and North Africa, they pronounced the piece similarly, but with a longer phlegmy breath: “rukhkh.”
Medieval Europeans may not have been too fond of the Muslim world (some still aren't, for that matter), but they did see the entertainment value in this game of strategy, and it was from shatranj that our game of chess was developed. Many Europeans, however, didn't know what to do with the phlegmy-back-of-the-mouth H sound (okay, okay, not a technical term, but don't you wish it was? NO? Fine, how about a voiceless velar fricative, then?)
In French, Spanish and Italian, the khkh-sound of “rukhkh” became a plain old k-sound, as in “roc,” “roque” and “rocco.” By coincidence, the Italian word “rocco” also meant fortress, and over time the piece was renamed a “torre” or tower, a trend that spread all over Europe and influenced the now standard form of the rook as a castle tower.
Before the Great European Rook Renaming, the English learned the word from the French, and it takes only a slight respelling to go from “roc” to “rook.” Unlike many of the other words we have examined on our etymological tour of the chessboard, “rook” has not made a big splash in English. The opposite of a “pawn in the game of life,” is (sadly) not “a rook among rooks.” This poor word is so obscure that many beginning players call the piece a “castle” instead, understandably led on by its shape.
This has been another straight shooting edition of the Word of the Moment at Schendo's Bad Grammar. Many thanks go out to the giants of etymology, Etymonline and the OED, without whom I'd have a lot less to talk about. Also helpful is Ari Luiro's Chess Pieces in 73 Languages. If you have anything to add, please comment below or contact Bad Grammar on Facebook. If you have found any editing mistakes, I suggest you double check the title of this website.
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