2777: Tsar and Czar (or Tzar) Jul 28, 2024
Some languages have official systems for transliteration, like Chinese to English, though these systems have been updated multiple times in history. However, for many common languages written in other writing systems, transliteration is often inconsistent. While Russian transliterations are usually pretty standard, Russian contains many sounds not found in English, and some letters do not correspond directly between the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. This is reflected in the choice of Tsar or Czar (or the much rarer Tzar), since the letter Ц (tse) is pronounced somewhere between /ts/ and /tz/, though historically, and in some other Cyrillic-written languages it closer to /ṣ/. Since the word ‘czar’ is derived from ‘Caesar’, some choose to maintain that in the spelling.
This also seems to be contextual, which, as we’ll see, has ramifications today. For instance, “Czar Nicholas” was the most popular form in the 18th and 19th centuries until a few years after the Romanovs were deposed. At that point, “Tsar Nicholas” became the preferred spelling by a wide margin, starting in 1923. A similar trend occurred with Czar Boris / Tsar Boris, where the former was more popular until 1904, after which the latter became dominant. This change predates the reign of Boris III of Bulgaria, who assumed the throne in 1919 where a change might have been expected.
You might think modern uses would follow this trend, but recently in the news, the phrase "Border Czar" referring to Vice President Kamala Harris has predominantly followed the traditional spelling with a 'C'. This is not an isolated case; modern political taskmasters or policy leaders are often spelled with ‘czar’, including the Drug Czar appointed by the US Senate in 1982, and titles like "terrorism czar" or "cybersecurity czar" consistently use CZ-. While these forms have historically been interchangeable, we may eventually see ‘Tsar’ distinguished as the Eastern European leader and ‘czar’ as a political appointee for specific tasks.
