The name bouzouki comes from the Turkish word , meaning "broken" or "modified",Musical Traditions, Issues 2–4, 1984, p. 19 and comes from a particular re-entrant tuning called , which was commonly used on its Turkish counterpart, the . 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 manner of a Neapolitan mandolins so as to increase the strength of the body to withstand thicker steel strings. The type of the instrument used in rebetiko music was a three-course instrument with three pairs of strings, but in the 1950s a four-course variety was developed and was made popular by Manolis Chiotis.
