The Jackalso said Infantryin French playing cards is one of the Three figurestogether with the Queen and al King. In French playing cards – To be clear, those with i four seed (hearts, paintings, flowers and spades) – The jack is now often represented as a young man in courtesan clothes, usually associated with the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. His role of servantIn addition to the clothing, it is well explained also by its positioning in terms of value: the Jack, in fact, follows the 10 but precedes the figure of the queen who in his time precedes that of the king.
Probably, the French cards spread in the Anglo -Saxon world between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, where the jack was originally known with the term of Knavewhich indicated, in fact, the servant or the gauon (a young helper who carried out the most humble tasks in the service of others).
For some time, the British cards retained this wording, but a small problem arose in the XIX. In this period, in fact, the values and seeds to the corners of the cards began to index: this problem mainly concerned the introduction of the printed letters because both the name of the infantryman (knave) and the king (King) began with the “K“, And this could have created confusion during the game. After an initial period in which the infantryman was identified with the letters”KN“, To avoid ambiguity, the producers of cards chose the”J“By Jack, who was already very widespread in popular use. In ancient English, in fact, “Jack” was a common name Used to indicate an ordinary boy or man, often of popular class (hence the origin of the Anglo-Saxon expression “Jack-Of-All-Trades”, used to indicate a handyman).
The term entered this way into the tradition of Anglo -Saxon decks and, thanks to the international spread of playing cards, today that of the Jack has become a universally shared name.
