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nice page. your king's court link doesn't seem to go to the right spot, btw.
You all make very good points. But I should point out that Gothic Chess also uses Chancellor. Perhaps we should indicate that the preferred name is Marshal(l), but Chancellor is also commonly used. Another point: should we have reserved names for certain pieces? Should we try to enforce the use of the names 'Marshal(l)' and 'Chancellor' exclusively for the Knight-Rook?
I prefer Marshal (one l, Freeling's usage notwithstanding) in part because there are a lot of piece-names that start with C and I often strive for unambiguous English notation. I also tend to use Archbishop instead of Cardinal for the same reason. I'm not sure there is a consensus for Chancellor or Marshal, but I would use neither name for any other piece-move. Both names seem to be strongly associated with the specific R+N combination.
The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary agrees with you, but Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition) offers Marshall as a variant spelling. Based on sources available on the web, both Christian Freeling and Jose Raul Capablanca have used the double-l spelling of Marshall. This spelling is used on Freeling's own mindsports.net website, and it is used in a quotation from Capablanca provided on the page http://www.chessvariants.com/programs.dir/capaprogdesc.html I believe there is no general consensus on the name of this piece. My own preference is for Marshall over Chancellor, and I disfavor calling it the Chancellor. First of all, Capablanca's original name for the piece was Marshall. Second, Capablanca created confusion around the name Chancellor by using it for each of the two extra pieces in his Chess variant. In 1929, he used this name for the piece he later called the Archbishop. Third, the word Marshall has its etymological roots in a word for horse. The word is marah, which is etymologically related to our word mare. In its original uses, a Marshall was someone who worked with horses. This is suitable for a piece that gains the leaping powers of the Knight, a piece that was originally known as a horse. But the word Chancellor comes from a Latin word for doorkeeper, which has nothing to do with horses. Also, the name Chancellor has been more widely used for different pieces, whereas the name Marshall has more consistently been used for this piece. Besides the Bishop-Knight piece, which was once called a Chancellor by Capablanca, the game King's Court uses the name Chancellor for a very different piece.
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