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
Bouzouki instrument more laborious. To achieve this, manufacturers use different techniques, each one having their own secrets. Many modern instrument have a metal rod or bar (truss-rod) set into a channel in the neck, under the fingerboard, which adds some weight, but increases rigidity, and allows adjustment of the neck should it begin to warp. The Greek bouzouki is a plucked musical instrument of the lute family, called the thabouras or tambouras family. The tambouras has existed in ancient Greece as pandoura, and can be found in various sizes, shapes, depths of body, lengths of neck and number of strings. The