The name of what common orchestral instrument is a gross misnomer?

gonnzo

The English horn. "The term cor anglais is French for English horn, but the instrument is neither English nor a horn. The instrument is thought to have originated in Silesia about 1720, when a bulb bell was added to the oboe da caccia, a Baroque alto instrument of the oboe family, possibly by J. T. Weigel of Breslau. It has been suggested that the tenor oboe and the oboe da caccia resembled the horns played by angels in religious icons of the Middle Ages and that this gave rise to the Middle High German name engellisches Horn, meaning angelic horn. But engellisch also meant English, and so the angelic horn became the English horn, a name which was retained for the bulb-belled tenor oboe after the oboe da caccia fell into disuse around 1760." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_horn Jun 20 09, 3:52 PM

Arpeggionist

As Stephen D. Burton explains in his book "orchestration", the term is supposed to actually be French for "angled" horn, a word which is pronounced identically to "English" in French. This would certainly fit the description of the instrument, which has a curved mouthpiece. Other intruments that are misnomers include the basset horn (named after its inventor, named Horn, and being a basset clarinet), the alto clarinet (which is lower, not higher, than the regular clarinet), and the Wagner tuba. Jun 20 09, 8:04 PM