Morris Games

[Porges]

Shisima

• Try to find African Games of Strategy: A teaching manual by Louise Crane (1982)

[Porges]

One (Bangla) name of Three Men's Morris is given as "tant fant". This seems to be a duplicated noun, from the word তাঁত meaning "loom".

Some ideas of what this could mean (based on examples given in Total Reduplication in Bengali):

• "loom-like" (doubling as approximation)
• "weaving" (doubling as indication of processuality)
• "row by row" (using Sanskrit root तन्त्र 'tantra', which has 'row' as a meaning)
• wild guess: "warp & weft" (again using the Sanskrit root which has 'warp' as a meaning, since "warp, etc" could be the meaning of the duplication)

Or it could be a nonsense phrase like "Loom Schmoom", given the dismissive context of তাঁত ফাঁত on this page.

Thanks to Soham Chowdhury for confirming this last one – it's probably a nonsense phrase, but not necessarily dismissive.

---

Another Bangla name is given as "Tin guti pait pait" which appears to be তিন গুটি পাইত পাইত based on this app. This could be something like "Getting(?) Three Pieces".

[Porges]

Murray gives "Qirq" (قرق) as an old Arabic name and "Drīs" as a more modern one. I have found a single review on an Android game that uses the word دريس drīs. The modern name for this category of games seems to be لعبة ادريس luebat adris “Idris games”.

Lane's mentions al-Qirq in another entry, saying it is also called السُّدَّرُ (a plant with a woody pit, possibly used for the pieces?), and the pieces are called خَيْل (horses). However, in yet another entry, السُّدَّرُ is stated to be the same as الطَّبَنُ (i.e. what is usually referred to as Tâb, apparently modernly الطاب).

Much later edit: The correct entry appears to be this.

There are some similar words meaning "flat ground, plateau"... I feel like this is close to the meaning.

Dozy's dictionary links q-r-q to Spanish alcorque (close to alquerque) – could they be related?

Salmone's dictionary has several meanings. The only one with the same vowels as Lane's is "a. Habit. b. Ignoble descent.". But a different entry gives "قِرْقِب" as "belly" (links to flat ground?) To continue on that word, Wiktionary has one meaning of قرقب being "to press olives", which has been suggested as an origin for where the alquerque name comes from:

[Porges]

For Three Men's Morris, Hyde gives "Hugjurè" (Murray mis-copies as "Hujura") as a Persian name and writes this as هجوره (I think!). Google translate gives this as "His Majesty".

[Porges]

There is a good summary of Greek names here.

[Porges]

Found the al-Qāmūs reference!

Here is the dictionary entry for it.

[Porges]

Evidence of some Chinese names here: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32964434421.html