Bouzouki the "tetrachordo" ("four-course") has four pairs of strings. The name "bouzouki" comes from the Turkish word "bozuk", meaning "broken" or "modified", and comes from a particular re-entrant tuning called "bozuk düzen", which was commonly used on its Turkish counterpart, the "saz-bozuk". It is in the same instrumental family as the mandolin and the lute. Originally the body was carved from a solid block of wood, similar to the saz, but upon its arrival in Greece in the early 1910s it was modified by the addition of a staved back borrowed from the Neapolitan mandola, and the top angled in the
Irish bouzouki is closer to the D3A3D4 tuning of the Greek trichordo bouzouki than is the guitar-like tuning C3F3A3D4 used on the modern Greek tetrachordo, and is particularly well suited to a modal harmonic approach to accompaniment as used in Irish traditional music. Alec Finn, playing a Greek trichordo bouzouki, uses the traditional D3A3D4 tuning with the octave pair on the low D course changed to unison. Amongst many luthiers and musicians the Irish bouzouki is considered to be part of the mandolin family, but for others this new family of instruments is a separate development. In actuality, the mandolin and lute