Help creating a Chess piece

[ARCMusicPublishings]

Hello, all,

I'm not fluent in Chinese; I know how to write and read all but a select few characters. Because of a chess variant project that I'm partaking in, I would benefit from help by one who might be much more proficient.

I'm trying to find a single character that means "Queen"/"Empress"/"female authoritarian"/"nation's maternal leader"/"sovereign female ruler", one which contains the sovereign ruler radical, "王". Because the character will become one of my chess variant pieces, it would need to be a single character. ("女王" or "王後" won't fit into the tiny space of a chess piece!)

With that being said, I created the following hypothetical yet possibly real(?) Chinese characters. I hope I don't come off too comical or naive. Do these following actually exist? Does something similar to them exist?

https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/ag182/LonderDonder3105/Hypothetical_samples.png?&fit[/img]
If they don't exist, what Chinese character does, that contain the sovereign ruler radical?


On a tangent, has the character for Pheonix, "凰", ever been an idiom or metaphor for Queen?

Thanks greatly for your help.

[889]

后 seems to be the accepted single-character designation for Queen in chess, short for 皇后.

 

Other designations in the chart midway down to the right here.

 

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/國際象棋

[ARCMusicPublishings]

Thank you for your reply, 889.

Is there an alternative where 后 (simplified version of 後?) is used as a radical? In keeping with Xiangqi tradition, I'd like each 'team's' Wong-Hau to be represented by a similar yet different character; perhaps 后 would be assigned Black/Red, and another character which contains 后 as a radical would be assigned white.

On a tangent, you mentioned 皇. I just realized that this character is the internal makeup of Pheonix, "凰", which may work very nicely(!!). So, as I was asking earlier, has Pheonix in Chinese ever been served as a metaphor for Queen? If it has, "皇" could be Black/Red, and 凰 could be white.

[Demonic_Duck]

王 as a semantic component is actually a simplified form of 玉 ("jade"), not "king".

 

41 minutes ago, ARCMusicPublishings said:

Is there an alternative where 后 (simplified version of 後?) is used as a radical?

 

 

Nope, that's not how radicals work.

[ARCMusicPublishings]

I thought a character's radical is the 'definition' or some terminological characteristic description of the character in question; and the latter portion (which I forgot what it's officially called) is the 'pronunciation'.

 

Also, thanks for clarifying 王. Edit - Though, isn't王 shared by both "jade" and "King"? According to Wiktionary, the 1st listed definition of 王 is "King/Monarch/Prince".

("https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/王")

 

2nd Edit - I just came across the following, partly by chance! This character: "媓"(!!). What does it mean?

[Demonic_Duck]

35 minutes ago, ARCMusicPublishings said:

isn't 王 shared by both "jade" and "King"? According to Wiktionary, the 1st listed definition of 王 is "King/Monarch/Prince".

 

王 as a standalone character means "king". As a semantic component, however, it contributes the meaning "jade". This is due to corruption from the original form 玉 to the reduced form without the dot.

 

35 minutes ago, ARCMusicPublishings said:

I thought a character's radical is the 'definition' or some terminological characteristic description of the character in question; and the latter portion (which I forgot what it's officially called) is the 'pronunciation'.

 

Many characters (形声字) work like this - they have a semantic component (形旁) and a phonetic component (声旁).

 

The concept of "radicals" (部首), which is often confused with the concept of semantic components due to there being some overlap, is really nothing more than a way of ordering characters in dictionaries. See Why Radicals ARE NOT the "Building Blocks of Chinese Characters".

 

35 minutes ago, ARCMusicPublishings said:

 I just came across the following, partly by chance! This character: "媓"(!!). What does it mean?

 

Nice find! I don't think it's at all a common character in modern usage - my guess is most Chinese folks who don't specialize in philology wouldn't recognize it. But it's pretty easy to guess what it means and how to pronounce it (being one of those aforementioned 形声字, but with 皇 additionally contributing to the meaning as well as the sound).

 

https://bkso.baidu.com/item/媓

[ARCMusicPublishings]

Well, I'm certainly learning quite a lot from you tonight!

I guess I am one of those mis-taught students that Ash Hensen was speaking about in the youtube video. (Interestingly enough, I do somewhat remember from my past that I've always been curious as to why the phonetic sound component isn't always to the  right and the "definition" isn't always the left portion. I was a novice beginner in learning Mandarin (before prematurely putting it to hiatus), and that was the first thing I was instructed on... didn't seem completely accurate...)

That aside, DemonicDuck, can you do me a favor? https://bkso.baidu.com/item/媓 is showing up as an error page in my browser; for some reason, I just can't access it. I was wondering if you may copy and past the intended anticipating message here.

I feel like I'm very close to achieving my goal! 

[Demonic_Duck]

Quote from the page (emphasis added):

媓，huáng，形声字。字从女从皇，皇亦声。“皇”指帝王。“女”和“皇”联合起来表示“女性帝王”或“帝王元妃”。本义：女王或帝后。引申义：国母。说明：帝舜在位的时间是2162 BC-2110 BC，参见本百科词条“三皇五帝年表”。娥皇和女英都是帝尧的女儿，娥皇是姐姐，女英是妹妹。姐妹共侍一夫并非意味着帝舜荒淫，这完全是由两条因素所引起的古代文化现象，即一，古人医疗条件差，年轻人死亡率比现在高很多；二，古人的观念是：不孝有三，无后为大。为确保有后代，舜娶了娥皇女英姐妹俩，结果她俩共同为舜生下一子商均。

[ARCMusicPublishings]

Oh my great heavenly bliss! I reached one end of my goal!

媓 will be the Empress/"National Maternal leader" of the White-side army.

Now, the Pheonix character:  凰. If it is a metaphor or a common/uncommon emblem of female rulers in China, my Queen piece would be created.

So far, I've only gotten one reply from another forum by a member who stated "Not that I know of, it isn't associated with 'Queen'. I'm only just learning Chinese myself. Sorry I couldn't be more of a help." I don't know how much weight that statement carries in determining whether I should try to make Pheonix the Black-side army's Empress, or if I should move on and try something else.

 

 

[Demonic_Duck]

凰 does carry some slight meaning of femininity (traditionally, 鳳 is a male phoenix and 凰 is a female one). I'm not aware of any association with 皇, though, other than it happening to be the phonetic component.

 

You're probably better off with 后 and 媓. 后 (as part of 皇后 or 太后) was used for Empress Dowager Cixi, for example.

 

Incidentally, it appears that this specific meaning of 后 is also 后 in traditional characters (unlike the meaning "after", where it'd be 後).

[ARCMusicPublishings]

Quote

You're probably better off with 后 and 媓.

 

This is a decent point. After all, Elephant and Spiritual Minister do not mean the same thing in English and aren't even remotely related to each other in Chinese (or, are they?); and causes me to wonder how they ever became identical counterparts on the Xiangqi board. Edit - I just remember that they are pronounced the same in Cantonese - "Jœng". That's probably why those two were utilized: because they sound the same. (and have some kind of historic correlation with each other?)

 

Part of me is determined and stubborn: I still somehow want to use "Pheonix", because it's such a pretty character. (Just looking at it is eye candy to me!). And,  媓 and it look so similar to each other, which may be of a benefit for chess visual display. The other half of me, however, wants to take your advice in utilizing Hau, 后.

 

See the dilemna? Option A looks similar to each other. Option B is terminologically more fitting. ?

 

(At least Mountain and "Immortal Priest" was much easier to determine and finalize, since they look the same and probably have some correspondence with each other. So, that piece was squared away with little hardship.)

 

Edit - I just came across one problem as far as Hau, 后, is concerned: It looks too similar to "soldier", 兵.

I think that by default, your proposed pair, 后 and 媓, would  work out great. It's terrible that this ^^^ had to get in the way.

[ARCMusicPublishings]