Just curious, do they call it a knight's move in the east? I doubt it seeing as it refers to chess and so it seems like an American go term.

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Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

http://senseis.xmp.net/?Keima

It's called a keima. I prefer knights move.

In Korea, it is called 날일자행마(Narilja-haengma) or just 날일자(Narilja). It means to move as the Chinese charactor 日 (see the squares as on the go board). In the same way, kosumi is called 입구자(행마) from 口, and the large knight's move is called 눈목자(행마) from 目.

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Wait, please.

Japan is not 'East', neither 'East Asia'

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Wait, please.

Hi Joel, I believe it's keima in Japanese.
As mentioned earlier, it's also different in Chinese and Korean.

The etymologies may be related to the Chinese character ma 馬 (horse),
but I'm not sure. ( The ma part in keima...? )

In xiangqi Chinese chess, the 馬 piece is the equivalent to
the knight in chess, and also moves in the same shape.

It is very similar. It is called keima in Japan which is the Japanese chess piece that moves most similarly to a knight in chess.

What? When Europeans say (far) east they usually refer to the Asian countries.

Ah fair enough.
I figured it was east of me.
Forgive my ignorance.

I live in Texas. If I go east enough, even California is east of me.

Japan is sure part of the (far) east. It is located in the east of Eurasia; the American continent was unknown in the mainstream history for a very long time.

The original question was, how the knight's move is called in the 'east', not in Japan.

Your answer 'It is called keima (in the east)' was interpreted as wrong by me since I live(ed) in the 'east', in which no one ever say the word keima.

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Wait, please.

No way the Japanese could call it the knight's move. The samurai's move, perhaps.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

桂馬 are the kanji for keima, which is almost always spelled with kana in Japanese go books. An interesting thing is that, as Ed Lee suggested, the "ma" part of keima is the character for horse, but the "kei" part is the character for katsura, the wood commonly used for go boards. Whether that wood is also used for shogi pieces I don't know.

I actually live in California. So if I go east enough Texas is twice east of me.

Kei here refers to incense from laurel leaves. All the back-rank shogi pieces have an epithet based on precious substances, decreasing in value from king to lance. Katsura is not normally used for shogi pieces. Boxwood is usual.

The go term comes from the shogi "knight" (laurel horse), but is not the original term, which was 斜走. Dosaku probably said "shasou" but this term has long been glossed as keima and for a long term was written 桂走. The old Chinese term 飛 was also in occasional use.

No influence from western chess.

I can't add to JF's explanation of the japanese terms, but it may be useful to remember that "knight" for the chess piece is mainly an English/French language phenomenon and many languages have sth. like horse instead.