Who Calls a Harmonica a Mouth Organ

Question: “Who Calls a Harmonica a Mouth Organ?”

Why Do I Care: Here in Penang, Malaysia, at a guesthouse called 75 Lodge, there is a steady stream of long time travelers and eccentrics. One older man, we’ve dubbed ‘The Aristocrat’ for, well, his self declaration that he is an aristocrat, sat down while I was playing my harmonica and told me to ‘stop playing my damn mouth organ’. Mouth organ? Who the hell calls it a mouth organ? He comes up with all kinds of outdated terms I’ve never heard of in his refined British accent, but this one I objected to. At any rate, it went into the book, and now it’s answered here.

Answer: Googling ‘mouth organ’, I found a stub of a Wikipedia article basically explaining that the mouth organ is a greater umbrella term for any instrument that you blow into. Another site said it was a synonym for the harmonica. That’s about it.

Conclusion: I’m still unconvinced. Then again, ‘The Aristocrat’ is an old man born before the internet, or computers; probably before dictionaries were even invented. I will continue referring to my harmonica as a ‘blues harp.’ Then again, I’m from Chicago and we love the blues.

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouth_organ

http://thesaurus.com/browse/mouth+organ