An Insight into the historical semantics of names of music instruments

Abstract

This paper examines the semantic changes of names of musical instruments, mainly the violin, guitar, flute and the aulos, by looking into the etymology and history of their development. Historical semantics is the crux of this paper as it looks into words through a diachronic study whereby it considers the development of a word over a period of time. Etymology is also vital as it helps as a starting point of historical investigation of a language which provides an observation of its history. One of the aims of this paper is to determine whether there is a pattern in the naming of said instruments as a whole, or only applicable in a case-by-case basis. Overall, there seems to be a pattern in the naming of said instruments where there is a metonymic meaning transfer from the material used to make those instruments to the names themselves. Violin and guitar are postulated to have derived from ‘strings’ from Latin and Old Persian respectively. Flute and aulos are postulated to have derived from ‘wood’ from Arabic and Latin respectively. This paper also serves to be the starting point for further research due to its limitations on the scope of instruments. Further research should look into including other instruments used in an orchestra like percussion or brass family to further support this paper.