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Charles Gilman wrote on Thu, Nov 6, 2008 06:17 AM UTC:
As I say, had a consensus built up over both communities I would go along
with it, but that never happened. Neither community has registered highly
on the other's radar. The problematists didn't use Carrera's, or
Bird's, or Capablanca's names for Rook+Knight or Bishop+Knight, they
invented their own, so they can hardly blame us for not adopting their
nomenclature either. Some pieces which apparently work well in problems
are not good for variants, and it would be a waste to reserve names for
them that could be deployed for more useful game pieces.
	Is now the right time to stop adding new names for existing pieces - or
new pieces for existing names? Perhaps, but achieving that entails those
of us who know of duplications highlighting them to everyone else
promptly. I have myself pointed out such anomalies and received short
shrift. Is now the right time to say that it should have been stopped five
years ago, when I first called this piece Caliph in Ecumenical Chess? No,
because it is an impossible task. It is too late to prevent this usage
becoming entrenched through my themed variants, because it has already
happened.
	Should every piece be known by the first name used for it? If so, it
would mean ambiguity as at leat two pieces have first seen the light under
each of the names Champion, Dragon, Falcon, Giraffe, Scorpion - and
probably many others. Should every name be used only for the first piece
to use it? If so, the 1943 usage of Falcon would rule out Falcon Chess.
Should we use an 'established catalogue', regardless of how few it is
established among and how hard it is to remember such names? What's the
problematists' name for the piece on this page? I have no idea and so, I
suspect, have most of us. Do they even have one? Better to use names that
have become established through use in many variants, or memorable from a
common theme with similar pieces.

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