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How did the word come into English with the two variants czar and tsar? The 'ts' spelling is a transliteration of the Russian 'царь', but the 'cz' spelling is what interests me more. To me it looks Polish, where 'cz' is common, but is pronounced as English 'ch'. Where did this second form come from?

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'tsar' and 'czar' are pronounced identically in English /zar/. – Mitch Sep 27 '11 at 18:54
While pronounced identically, the metaphorical ones, i.e. governmental officials with supra-departmental responsibilities— are invariably czar in the U.S.: AIDS czar, counterterrorism czar, drug czar. The British seem to accept tsar for both types: telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/9550058/… . – choster Feb 7 at 1:13

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Here’s what the OED says:

The Slavonic word ultimately represents Latin Cæsar, but came . . . through the medium of a Germanic language in which the word had the general sense ‘emperor’ . . . The spelling with cz- is against the usage of all Slavonic languages; the word was so spelt by . . . the chief early source of knowledge as to Russia in Western Europe, whence it passed into the Western Languages generally; in some of these it is now old-fashioned; the usual German form is now zar ; French adopted tsar during the 19th cent. This also became frequent in English towards the end of that century, having been adopted by the Times newspaper as the most suitable English spelling.

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This NGram shows how tsar came to be the dominant spelling almost a century ago, confirming my suspicion that czar is the older version. It's probably only been used at all in recent decades to deliberately evoke the sense of talking about something very long ago. – FumbleFingers Sep 27 '11 at 19:06
According to COCA, czar is the dominant spelling. As in drug czar. I doubt that's meant to evoke anything resembling Tsarist Russia. – z7sg Ѫ Sep 27 '11 at 19:52
-1 Also I'm sorry but I doubt this is 'fair use' of the OED given that it is entirely copy-pasted. – z7sg Ѫ Sep 27 '11 at 19:54
The Guardian newspaper style guide says tsar not czar. Avoid "the government's transport tsar" or other PR-generated nonsense – Hugo Sep 27 '11 at 20:32
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@FumbleFingers The 'fact', is that czar is currently the dominant spelling and that is according to a balanced corpus, not google books. The Guardian Style Guide cannot simply prescribe otherwise. I suggest people who agree with your original and erroneous comment on the usage of czar search this corpus for themselves. – z7sg Ѫ Sep 28 '11 at 1:28
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The spelling 'czar' was almost universally used in the U.S. well into my adulthood. I am now in my 80's. During WWII we had various people in the government running imnportant programs who were dubbed 'czar' of their program, whether it had to do with manpower or some industry or price controls. The word morphed into 'tsar', which my limited knowledge of Slavic languages would suggest is closer to the Russian, sometime later, probably gradually through the '50's to 70's--much more recently than a century ago. I can recall noting the change and wondering why. If the OED doesn't cite usage to indicate when the change took place, I don't know who would.

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welcome to the Stack Exchange sites. While your answer (based on personal experience) is good, for questions like this we really appreciate answers that point to sources. In this case, perhaps there are some newspaper or magazine articles from the 1940's on that use czar/tsar would be helpful in backing up your answer. Thanks! – Jay Elston Feb 7 at 1:28

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