Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

the information is really good, but it is inaccurate about one thing...the
name.
as an arab, 'alfil' must sound like 'been', and the 'al-' part could be
droped, for it stands for 'the' in english, so it's correct form is 'feil'
and in Arabic it's plural form is 'fei-ya-lah' or 'fie-lan' for two.

Your point is well taken.  I'd like to see pieces given linguistically
valid names.  Unfortunately, it's been called an alfil for so long and by
so many that I doubt the more correct feil will take hold, even though it
deserves to.

When names move from one language to another, then articles like the
definite article sometimes just stick to them. I've seen quite a few place
names in the south of Spain, for instance, that have names beginign with
'Al-', obviously the Arabic definite article.
'Alfil' is the name the piece acquired in Europe. The fact that the text
mentions it is good enough.
The Arabic 'fil' is also related to the Hebrew 'pil', which can be found
in the Mishna, dating back to the first couple of centuries C.E., and
which the Even-Shoshan Hebrew dictionary traces back to teh Akkadian
'pilu'.
The chess piece was obviously named for the Arabic word.

Regarding the name, the similarity between Alfil and Elephant is
fortuitous. The latter derives from Elephas, a word in Classical Greek
meaning both elephant and ivory. A similar coincidence in chess history is
that of Spider (literally spinner) and Ashtapada (literally
eight-footed).
Regarding the move itdose seem strange that so weak a piece represents so
strong an animal, and a leaping elephant seems very fanciful. A more
accurate portrayal of elephantine behaviour would be if it were blocked by
an allied piece (as in Xianqqi, the Chinese version) but captured any
enemy piece en route. This would mean that it could capture (a) on three
times as many squares as it can reach and (b) two pieces at once.

But I'm confused.. What is the name for Elephant in Arabic? since the
piece represented just that! 'Al' is the article ok.. ist it Fil? Or did
the name just made sense in Persian (Pil?)and the Arabs did the same thing
Spanish did in keeping the name without any mining? (well.. in reality
Alfil IS the Spanish word for Bishop, so it has a mining).
Any native Arabic please want's to comment?

Curious.. if my country (Portugal) and Spain have a lot in common on it's
evolution, why do We call also Bishop to the bishop? :P

We don't seem to have a Piececlopedia page for the Modern Elephant (Betza FA); this 'Elephant' page is solely about the Alfil. While nowadays the FA is in much wider use than the A, so much that 'Elephant' has become more or less synonymous for Modern Elephant, and when you mean 'Alfil' you better say 'Alfil' if you want to avoid confusion.

What should we do? Create a new page for Modern Elephant, and link to that from the Elephant page? Or add a paragraph about the Modern Elephant here?

I'd vote for a separate Modern Elephant page. I suspect there's a bit of history behind it, as well as various alternate names.

I would create a new page for the modern elephant.

I'd be fine with dropping the Elephant Link entry from this page, if others agree that applying the term elephant to the alfil is outdated (we can always keep a note in the text here and in the new FA page to help direct folks).

The Modern Elephant (FA), a type of fairy piece that I have a soft spot for, may have first appeared in a CV in the case of historic CV Courier-Spiel, but I don't know of any documentation that states that:

https://www.chessvariants.com/historic.dir/courierspiel.html

I have also concluded the same thing in my research for my most recent book. The modern Elephant's move was first proposed by Albers in his Courier-Spiel in 1821. As far as I am concerned I had used that Elephant, under that name, in Shako and Tamerlane II (first version) since 1990. In my mind, I wanted to include the moves of the ancestors of the Queen and Bishop into that piece. Then I gave the Elephant the move of the Ferz and the Alfil.

Since you've done the research, would you care to do the honours of writing up a page?

If not I'll probably pick it up eventually (unless someone else beats me to it), but since I don't own a copy of your book I'd probably miss something.

Today is elephant day.

Where's the Modern Elephant page?

Noöne has made one.

It wasn't really established as a piece with much history back in the Piececlopedia's heyday, and of the occasional additions made since it's apparently been less of a priority. If noöne gets to it by the time I've got round to doing Panda (slip‐rook) and Stag (4,2, a.k.a. lancer/charolais) pages, it'll be next on my list, but that may be a little while