Key signature names and translations


When a musical key or key signature is referred to in a language other than English, that language may use the usual notation used in English : languages which use the English system include Irish, Welsh, Azeri, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Filipino, Swahili, Esperanto.
Or it may use some different notation. Two notation systems are most commonly found besides the English system, the Fixed Do key notation and the German key notation
  1. Fixed Do key notation – used in Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Breton, Basque, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Vietnamese. Most countries where Fixed Do solmization is used also use the Fixed Do key notation. Instead of the letters C, D, E, F, G, A, B, seven syllables are used to refer to the seven diatonic tones of C major: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, with some variations and adaptations according to country, language and alphabet, followed by the accidental and then the major/minor qualifier as needed.
  2. German key notation – used in German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Finnish, Estonian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Slovene, Hungarian, Polish, Czech and Slovak. The German key notation differs from the English system in two respects, namely that B is referred to by the letter H and B by the letter B by itself, and that sharp and flat designations do not use words but suffix is for sharps and suffix es for flats, except that in the German system the letter B by itself already means B flat. However in some places where the German system is in use one may encounter the use of B for B and Bes for B. This is especially common in the Netherlands.
There has been a tendency in some countries which historically used the Fixed Do key notation or the German key notation to switch to the English system, especially among musicians working in popular music genres or jazz. The only case where this can lead to some confusion is when the letter B is used: should it be understood as B or B ? Another tendency has been to use the English system in writing but to read it out according to either the Fixed Do or the German system if those are the systems used locally. For example recent French scores or books may use the English system, but French users would read out that notation according to the Fixed Do system. Similarly a Dutch musician may refer to a written F orally as Fis. This article is concerned with written usage.
To form a key designation, locate the note name in the pitch translation table and add the major/minor qualifier from the lower table as needed.
English العربيةGermanDutchJapaneseChineseKoreanItalianFrenchSpanishPortugueseRussianRomanianGreek
major الكبيرDurgroot, grote terts長調 大调 장조 maggioremajeurmayormaiorмажорmajorμείζονα
minor الصغيرMollklein, kleine terts短調 小调 단조 minoremineurmenormenorминорminorελάσσονα

Note that the 'major' alteration is usually superfluous, as a key description missing an alteration is invariably assumed to be major.
In the German notation scheme, a hyphen is added between the pitch and the alteration.
In German and Dutch the minor key signatures are written with a lower case letter.
For example, to describe Bach's Mass in B minor one could use: