this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
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The Russian word for emperor or king “царь” (English: Tsar) comes from Caesar.
I think being such an influential ruler that countries use your name to mean ruler is a little more impressive than a salad.
Same for German Kaiser which sounds quite different
Not if you pronounce it correctly. Cesar was not seesaw but Ke(tamin)sar(in gas). And Ke-sar to kei-sar is pretty close.
There is no one "correct" way to pronounce a language that's spoken over centuries in such a huge area. The German is close to the classical pronunciation of Julius' time while the Russian was borrowed much later when Latin already undergone a number of sound shifts. That's why German Kaiser is very different from Russian царь as I said in my first comment and I hope you won't deny that.
The changes in the word aren't from Latin, they're Slavic in origin. They show the borrowing was rather early, and a bit messy:
Then either Russian inherited *cãřь, or side-borrowed it from Old Church Slavonic. Either way the ending yer got dropped, the long vowel shortened, and you get the modern Russian form, ⟨царь⟩ [tsarʲ].
/aɪ̯/→/ɛ:/ could be from Latin, Greek or Gothic; all three underwent it.
That /k/→/tsʲ/ change is the progressive palatalisation of Common Slavic. Something similar happened in Latin, but after Greek borrowed the word, and Common Slavic interacted way more with Greek than with Latin.
But the biggest change was that completely erratic shortening, from *cěsãřь to *cãřь. Wiktionary mentions this happened with English cyning→cyng→king and mistress→miss; I've also seen this happening with Portuguese ⟨senhor⟩ mister, dialectally rendered as "siô", "sô", "nhô" etc. (Plus its female form ⟨senhora⟩→siá, sá, nhá etc.)
TIL Thanks! I think my Latin teacher said it wrong to explain Latin sound shifts to us and I never looked it up.
To be fair with your Latin teacher, something similar could have happened in Latin. All the pieces are there; it's just they don't fit in time and place for this specific word.
Fun Fact: the Romans initially used "Caesar" as a title because their history as a republic made them leery of using "Rex" for rulers. Within a decade of the Western Empire falling meaning they wouldn't be title shamed as fake Romans, the Eastern Emperors officially adopted "Basileus," the Greek equivalent of "Rex/monarch" as a title that had been unofficially used for centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basileus
Tl;Dr the Romans used Caesar as title because it would have been gauche to admit they were a monarchy again
Actually Caesar started this when he was holding a public speech where someone in the crowd addressed him as king, he downplayed it as a confusion of names and replied something like "No, it's not Mr King, it's me, Caesar" (It's speculated that this was planned by Caesar to test the waters)
Naturally, as the Russian empire is the third Rome.
Don't believe me? Then get out! gestures towards open window
Hey now, the Russian empire ended with revolution and eventually ended up turning into the current Russian empire (lol) but iirc they married off a Romanoff to Finland before the Bolshevik revolution, and Finland became a republic through weird government chaos rather than a direct overthrow of the government, so technically I think Finland is the true heir to the Roman Empire