Do Re Mi or C D E? Three Ways to Name the Same Notes
Ask what the white key just left of the two black keys is called and you will get three answers. In London it is C. In Rome, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon and São Paulo it is Do. In Berlin it is also C — but seven keys up, the note an English speaker calls B is called H, and B means something else. None of the three is a mistake, and none is more musical than the others.
Letter names: C D E F G A B
The English-speaking world and the Netherlands name the seven natural notes with the first seven letters of the alphabet, usually recited from C: C D E F G A B. Sharps and flats are symbols after the letter: C♯, B♭.
Chord symbols use letters too, and that part has spread far beyond English: a lead sheet in Brazil or France writes G7 and Am, not Sol7 and Lam.
Fixed do: Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si
Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Brazil, the rest of Latin America, Greece, Romania, Russia, Japan and Korea name the same seven notes with syllables. The syllables are Italian in origin and are written Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si; some languages accent a few of them — Portuguese writes Dó, Ré, Fá and Lá, French writes Ré — and Japanese and Korean write them in their own scripts.
They began in the eleventh century as a memory aid for singers, taken by Guido of Arezzo from the first syllables of a hymn whose phrases each started one step higher: Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La. Ut later became the more singable Do, and Si was added for the seventh note.
In fixed do the syllables are absolute names, exactly like letters: Do is always the note an English speaker calls C, whatever key the piece is in. Sharps and flats attach in the same way — Do♯, Si♭.
The German H
German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian and the Scandinavian languages use letters, with two differences. The natural notes run C D E F G A H: the note English calls B is called H. And the letter B is not spare — it names B♭. A German key signature with one flat lowers H to B, and the order of sharps in German ends in H, not B.
The reason is a scribal accident. In medieval notation the seventh note came in two forms, a “hard” B written with a square b and a “soft” B written with a round one. The round b became the flat sign, ♭; the square b, in the hand of German scribes, came to look like an h and was read as one.
The rest follows its own logic. A sharp is the suffix -is, so C♯ is Cis and F♯ is Fis. A flat is the suffix -es, so D♭ is Des and G♭ is Ges, with two contractions, Es and As — and B♭ is simply B, never “Hes”. Dutch takes the same suffixes but keeps B for the natural, so Dutch B♭ is Bes: the two neighbours differ at exactly that one spot.
Movable do is a different thing
In English-speaking classrooms Do Re Mi is also taught, but as movable do: Do is the first note of whatever key you are in and moves with it, and the seventh is called Ti rather than Si. That is a tool for hearing the shape of a melody, not a naming system for absolute pitches, and it is why a Brazilian and an American can both say “Do Re Mi” and mean different things.
The same twelve notes
Lay the three rows side by side and they line up note for note:
- C — Do — C
- D — Re — D
- E — Mi — E
- F — Fa — F
- G — Sol — G
- A — La — A
- B — Si — H
The twelve notes of the octave, the semitones between them, the way a scale or a chord is built — none of it changes with the name. A major third is four semitones whether you count from C to E or from Do to Mi.
So none of the three is more correct. Letters are shorter to write and are what chord symbols use everywhere. Syllables are easier to sing, which is why they were invented. The German H is a quirk of history that half of Europe has kept. Learn the system your teacher and your sheet music use. If that is Do Re Mi, learn the letters too, for the chord charts; if it is C D E, know that Si is not a misprint.
What this site shows you
This site follows your language by default: a page in Portuguese names notes in solfège, a page in German writes H and Fis, a page in English writes B and F♯. Wherever a staff asks you to name a note there is a control that switches to the other system. A reader in a solfège language who picks letters gets the international C D E; a German who picks letters keeps H, because German already uses letters.
The lesson on notes and semitones lays out the twelve notes the names attach to, and the lesson on reading the staff shows how a clef gives them a place on the page.