The word "Mandolin"

[Sandy Beckler]

Do we know where the name or term "Mandolin" comes from?
Just curious....

Sandy:confused:

[man dough nollij]

I think it's named after a variety of cheese slicer...

[mandroid]

Almonds

[sgarrity]

I thought it was Italian for "out of tune" :))

[Tracy Ballinger]

Mandolin is derived from the Latin words 'mand' meaning finger, and 'olin' meaning pain :grin:

[Andrew B. Carlson]

A vioLIN played MANually without the use of a bow. A mandolin. It's a stick shift violin.

[newby]

Italian for "almond" -- lots of Google hits on this, including:

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:GtDp4GBCd-IJ:www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-mandolin.htm+italian+almond+mandolin&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=safari

If almond is the correct shape, I suppose that could mean an F model isn't a true mandolin . . . yikes!!

[abuteague]

French mandoline, from Italian mandolino, diminutive of mandola, lute, from French mandore, from Late Latin pandūra, three-string lute, from Greek pandoura.

From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
and from Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper

[MikeEdgerton]

I thought it was Italian for "out of tune"

That's my take on the definition.

[billkilpatrick]

That's my take on the definition.

vai piano ...

[JeffD]

French mandoline, from Italian mandolino, diminutive of mandola, lute, from French mandore, from Late Latin pandūra, three-string lute, from Greek pandoura.



Thats what I alway heard.

[Bob A]

Of course, the association between mandolin and almond stems from the Italian bowlback mandolins, which existed for centuries before Mr and Mrs Gibson came up with Orville.

[Ray(T)]

The "American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language" that's a bit of an oxymoron!

[Mandolin Mick]

Mando means hand. I always took "mandolin" to mean a violin played with the hands.

[Nelson Peddycoart]

I believe is it from the Italian word "mandorla", which means almond.

[mrmando]

Mando does not mean hand. Mano means hand, in both Italian and Spanish. Mando is not a word in Italian. It doesn't mean anything.

[EdHanrahan]

Italian for "almond" ... could mean an F model isn't a true mandolin . . . yikes!!

No. It means that only a bowlback (ya know: looks like an almond?) is a true mandolin. Just sayin'...

[bratsche]

Well, seeing as a violin is defined as a little viola (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violin_family), I suppose it's logical to define a mandolin as a little mandola, no?
;)

bratsche

[Jim MacDaniel]

Mando does not mean hand. Mano means hand, in both Italian and Spanish. Mando is not a word in Italian. It doesn't mean anything.

I grew up in small-town USA -- where very few people spoke Italian or Spanish -- yet I knew many people who pronounced it "manolin". ;)

[Sandy Beckler]

Great discourse...I've learned a few things that I never knew.
I always kind of figured that "Mandolin" came from the root "Mandola", but then that starts a whole other discussion.

[billhay4]

This (1707, from Fr. mandoline, from It. mandolino, dim. of mandola, a larger kind of mandolin, altered from L.L. pandura "three-stringed lute," from Gk. pandoura.) from Etymology Online (http://www.etymonline.com). The OED is not particularly helpful here but does verify the 1707 appearance in English.
Bill

[Mandoviol]

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

Mandolin's etymology:
[< French mandoline (c1750; 1938 in sense 2) and its etymon Italian mandolino (a1698) < mandola MANDOLA n. + -ino -INE suffix4. Compare PANDURINA n.
N.E.D. (1904) gives only the pronunciation with primary stress on the initial syllable.]

Mandola's etymology:
[< Italian mandola (1618), also mandora (a1600): see MANDORE n.]

Mandore's etymology:
[< French mandore (1548 in Middle French; also mandole), ultimately < classical Latin pandra (see PANDOURA n., and compare PANDORA n.2). The origin of the initial m- is uncertain and disputed: compare also Old French (Picardy) mandoire (c1280), Old Occitan mandurar to play the mandola (c1220), Italian mandola, mandora (see MANDOLA n.).]

Pandoura's etymology:
[< classical Latin pandra three-stringed lute and its etymon Hellenistic Greek , probably by metathesis < Arabic anbr and its etymon Persian anbr (see TAMBOURA n.). Compare earlier PANDURIST n.
Compare BANDORE n.1, BANDURA n., BANDURRIA n., BANJO n., MANDOLA n., MANDOLIN n., MANDORE n., PANDORA n.2, TAMBOURA n. This group of words denotes a wide variety of different stringed instruments, and the same word can denote several different instruments: for instance, Italian pandura is glossed by Florio (1598 in Worlde of Wordes) as ‘a musical instrument with three strings, a kit, a croude, a rebecke’, while F. Buonanni (1722 in Gabinetto Armonico) describes this as the Neapolitan name for an eight-stringed instrument like a mandola but much bigger, played with a plectrum. Some of the forms listed here may therefore refer to other instruments.
For an isolated borrowing of the Italian word compare:
1825 T. D. FOSBROKE Encycl. Antiq. II. xiii. 628 The Orpharion was like a guitar, but..was strung with wire... The Bandore, nearly similar, had a straight bridge; the Orpharion slanting. The Pandura was of the lute kind, the Mandura a lesser lute.
Compare an earlier example of the Latin word in a Latin-English dictionary:
1587 T. THOMAS Dict. Latinae et Anglicanae at Pandura, A musical instrument hauing but 3. strings, a rebecke, a violen.
Armenian p'andi long-necked lute, Ossetian fandir kind of fiddle, Georgian panduri three-stringed lute may be < the Greek word; Ukrainian bandura many-stringed lute-like instrument < Polish bandura, both borrowed < Italian.
In quot. 1933 the form pandura is probably dictated by the rhyme.]

So, ultimately, the word mandolin is derived from the Latin pandra. Wacky, huh?

[mrmando]

I grew up in small-town USA -- where very few people spoke Italian or Spanish -- yet I knew many people who pronounced it "manolin". ;)
Well, English pronunciations don't much matter, since it's not originally an English word ...

In Georgia (i.e., the Republic of Georgia, formerly part of the Soviet Union), one of the national folk instruments is a three-string lute called the panduri. I find it interesting that this term is so close to the Latin ... Georgian being part of the tiny South Caucasian language group, which is unrelated to the larger Indo-European and Slavic languages. I wonder if the term somehow got borrowed from Latin anyway.

[Coffeecup]

Just wondering if there might be an Asian connection, as there's a theory that Romani people came via that route, I went searching. This site looks interesting. I'll have to read it more thoroughly later. Pandoura (http://torban.org/torban2.html)

[Jim MacDaniel]

Sanskrit is believed by some to have beed decended from the Aryans who ended up in northern India way long ago, as there are several similar words common to both language groups. Could the South Caucasians have similarly got around, and visited further south with the ancestors of the panduri, influencing the Latin language via impromptou jams with local musicians? :mandosmiley:

[Mandoviol]

It could also be from the Greek; I think the "pandura" spelling is the Greek version. The Romans and Greeks shared a lot of words; it could very well be that, because the Byzantines had a lot of control over the Black Sea area, the word moved northward and eastward into the Ukraine and Georgia. The Turks may have helped that, too.

[mrmando]

Thanks to its location on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, Georgia has been something of an international East/West crossroads for centuries. Remember the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts, where Jason sails to Colchis to retrieve the Golden Fleece? Colchis is an ancient name for Georgia. So it's certainly possible that the name of a stringed instrument in Georgian could have been borrowed from another language. I did encounter a couple of panduri players in Tbilisi, but neither of them spoke English, so I wasn't able to have any kind of significant conversation.

[re simmers]

It all started on the planet "Vandiv," which was discovered in the 4th century by explorers on the starship, "Jenny Lynn." The names of the explorers were a family of people named Munro. The people on planet "Vandiv" played an instrument, the Vandiv Violin. The Munro family had a near-sighted son who wanted to play, but there were no more "long bows" because they were being used in war. So the near-sighted Munro son used a piece of tortoise shell to pluck the Vandiv Violin. The Vandivers (those on planet "Vandiv") liked the new way of playing. After several years they renamed the instrument after the Munro. They called it the "Mandiv Miolin." Over a period of centuries, the name evolved and was shortened to Mandolin.

By the way, the Vandivers and the Munros wrote a song and named it after the starship......................."Jenny Lynn." "Lore" tells us it remained a family favorite for the Vandivers and Munros for many a year.

Bob

[Sandy Beckler]

Hey Bob....ever think about writing science fiction?

[re simmers]

If it would that give me more time to play the mandolin......yes!

Bob

[Ben Milne]

Wiki needs to be updated then... Bob wins.

[Coffeecup]

Thank you Bob, a credible explanation at last.

[Bertram Henze]

I think this discussion is like opening Mandola's box...

Wait - it's Pandora's box, so why don't I open it, take Pandora out and play her :mandosmiley:

No, wait - isn't all the evil of the world supposed to come out of it, if I open it? That's how Bluegrass was created! :grin::grin:

[fredfrank]

"Mandolin" is the preface to the word "Cafe". (See the top of this page)

[Loretta Callahan]

A vioLIN played MANually without the use of a bow. A mandolin. It's a stick shift violin.

I'm sticking with this definition .... accurate or not, I like it!

[JeffD]

the starship, "Jenny Lynn."

:)) Sounds like late night AM radio to me.

[Elliot Luber]

As a child, Howie Mandel broke his violin bow and had to pick the strings. From then on this was known as a Mandolin, because he couldn't spell either.

[Mandoviol]

:)) Sounds like late night AM radio to me.

Does that mean that we need to get George Noory or Art Bell in on this?

[mrmando]

I'm sticking with this definition .... accurate or not, I like it!
It's fine for a loose definition ... but as etymology it's absolutely wrong. It implies things about the word's derivation, origin and roots that are outright falsehoods.

[re simmers]

I wish I would have thought of adding Howie Mandel to the "Lore."

Bob

[fishtownmike]

Maybe you need to change your screen name then.:)

Mando does not mean hand. Mano means hand, in both Italian and Spanish. Mando is not a word in Italian. It doesn't mean anything.