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Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.
Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.
There is already a designated Nightrider piece. So the Pegasus is not used for that. As far as I know, the Pegasus is mainly a mythological creature, not a particular kind of fairy piece.
I'm not familiar with the name Banshee for David Paulowich's Unicorn. The Fairy chess piece article does not say that the Unicorn standardly represents this piece. All it says is, "Combination of Bishop and Nightrider. Also known as Unicorn." The name of Unicorn for this piece was introduced by David Paulowich, a contributor to this site, and I used the same name for the piece in Caissa Britannia, which included pieces based on the heraldic animals of Britain.
In general, there is not a whole lot of standardization in names for fairy pieces. For example, the two most common fairy pieces are each known by several names. One is known as Princess, Archbishop, Cardinal, Equerry, Centaur, and Paladin. The other is known as Empress, Chancellor, Marshall, Guard, and Champion. Meanwhile, some of these names have been used for other pieces. There's a different Cardinal in Cardinal Super Chess, a different Champion in Omega Chess, etc.
To give an example in the other direction, the name Lion has been used for several different pieces. There is the Chu Shogi Lion, the Murray Lion, the Leo (called a Lion in Caissa Britannia), and the Half-Duck Lion used by David Paulowich in Unicorn Great Chess.
In general, it's up to a game inventor to choose which names he uses for pieces. However, some names are more closely associated with a particular piece than other names. Nightrider is a name closely associated with a particular piece, because it is a homonym for a literal description of the piece, Knight-rider. Other names may gain popularity if the game they are used in is popular enough, and the same piece does not appear in other games of equal popularity.
Although I've sometimes seen a Pegasus image used for pieces, it's not a common name for any fairy piece I can think of, and it is not listed in the Piececlopedia or the Wikipedia article.