Diatonic Button Accordion - Nomenclature

Nomenclature

Various terms for the diatonic button accordion are used in different parts of the English-speaking world.

• In Britain and Australia, the term melodeon is commonly used, regardless of whether the instrument has one, two, or three rows of melody buttons.
• In Ireland, melodeon is reserved for instruments with a single row of melody buttons (a “one-row” instrument), while instruments with two or three rows are called button accordions (often simply accordions).
• In North America, both one-row and multi-row instruments are usually simply called accordions. (Historically, the term melodeon was applied to various 19th-century free-reed organs.)

To simplify matters and avoid ambiguity, in the remainder of this article the term diatonic button accordion, or DBA, will be used.