Playing Dominoes Vintage Stereoview

The name "domino" is from the pieces' resemblance to Venetian Carnival masks known as domini, which were white with black spots. These masks were named because they resembled French priests' winter hoods, being black on the outside and white on the inside. The name ultimately derives from the Latin dominus, meaning "lord" or "master." Many different domino sets have been used for centuries in various parts of world to play a variety of domino games. Each domino originally represented one of the 21 results of throwing two 6-sided dice (2d6). One half of each domino is set with the pips from one die and the other half contains the pips from the second die. Chinese sets also introduce duplicates of some throws and divide the dominoes into two classes: military and civil. Chinese dominoes are also longer than typical European dominoes. The early 18th century witnessed dominoes making their way to Europe, making their first appearance in Italy. The game changed somewhat in the translation from Chinese to the European culture. European domino sets contain neither class distinctions nor the duplicates that went with them. Instead, European sets contain seven additional dominoes, with six of these representing the values that result from throwing a single die with the other half of the tile left blank, and the seventh domino representing the blank-blank (0–0) combination. Ivory Dominoes were routinely used in 19th century rural England in the settling of disputes over traditional grazing boundaries, and were commonly referred to as "bonesticks" (see Hartley, Land Law in West Lancashire in the mid- 19th Century, Farm Gazette, March 1984).