The Etymology of Exchequer
Exchequer is a fossil from medieval royal accounting and a window into the long reach of the Persian word for king. The story begins with shāh (Persian for king), the source of chess (originally chaturanga in Sanskrit, then shatranj in Persian). When the game travelled into medieval Europe, the chess piece called the king gave its name to the position of putting the king under attack — eschec in Old French, check in English. From eschec came eschequier, a chess board. Now the curious leap: the Anglo-Norman royal court computed its accounts on a large checkered cloth spread on a table, moving silver counters across the squares to add and subtract sums (a kind of physical abacus). The room where this happened, and the department that ran it, took its name from the cloth — the eschequier became the Exchequer, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer is still Britain’s finance minister. The Persian shāh has thus left tracks in chess, check, checkmate, cheque, exchequer, and the financial chequebook itself.