Ancient Chinese Musical Instrument Name Source

Musical instruments are the integrative product of man and nature. Ancestors observe and experience nature with the special wisdom, and the wonderful sound of nature is combined with things around us. After running-in of thousands of years, kinds of fine instruments are formed. Through research on the source of musical instruments'names, we can know our ancestors'understanding of music, nature and the relation among man, music and nature, from which we can observe ancestors'way of thinking, aesthetic concept and cognitive ability of things. Meanwhile, instrument is musical important carrier, and studying on the source of musical instruments'name, it provides a good reference for musicology and editing dictionaries.This thesis is divided into six chapters: The first chapter is focused on the research of the source of musical instruments'names. But no one discuss the source of the instruments'names. This is our starting point.The second chapter is a brief description of ancient musical instruments. On the one hand, what kind of things can be called a musical instrument, which is being disputed by academe. I proposed a point of "borrow", "evolution" and "flexible use" to explain the problem. On the other hand, the development history of Chinese musical instruments is depicted in this chapter.The third chapter, there is an important study on ErYa·ShiYue. Ancient scholars make a lot of researches on ErYa·ShiYue. We estimate advantages and disadvantages of their research results.The fourth chapter is an important discussion about the theoretical methods of the source of instruments'names. There are three methods including comparison among cognates, archaeological evidence of instruments and cultural psychological identification.The fifth chapter is the focus of this article. There are 37 kinds of musical instruments in the ErYa·ShiYue. I discuss the source of very one's name.The sixth chapter is focused on the point of view and rule of the naming. There are four rules including the priority of visual perception, the priority of physical sense in visual perception, the priority of shape perception in the physical sense and a weaker element, the angle of the metaphor in shape perception.Innovation of this paper is that there is no the research on the source of instruments'names, and that there are lots of errors and incertitude in researches on ancient musical instruments. This article will expound these issues. Disadvantages of this paper include scarce instruments'names and deficient knowledge of musical instruments.