ABSTRACT
The normalising tendency of the 20th century has assigned to the revived viol a set of unequivocal names that leave no room for misunderstanding: the Italians unhesitatingly refer to it as the viola da gamba, the English as the viol, the French as the viole de gambe, German-speakers as the Gambe and so on. The violin family is the only family of instruments which has succeeded in developing different names for all its individual instrument sizes instead of using the conventional qualifiers soprano, alto, tenor and bass. This naming process underwent a long development during the Baroque. It often took a circuitous route, and by no means always led to uniformity in terminology between the different Italian towns. In Germany as well, during the Renaissance, the new-born viol initially had to share its name with all the other bowed instruments.
