This list contains musical instruments of symbolic or cultural importance within a nation, state, ethnicity, tribe or other group of people.
Danish ethnologist Lisbet Torp has concluded that some national instrument traditions, such as the Finnish kantele, are invented, pointing to the "influence of intellectuals and nationalists in the nationwide promotion of selected musical instruments as a vehicle for nationalistic ideas".
[1] Governments do not generally officially recognize national instruments; some exceptions being the Paraguayan harp,[2] the Japanese koto[3] and the Trinidadian steelpan.
These mostly come from alternative spellings within English or alternative methods of transliterating from a foreign language to English, such as the Chinese yangqin, also transliterated yang ch'in and yang qin.
Others reflect regions or subcultures within a given nation, such as the Australian didgeridoo which is or has been called didjeridu, yidaki, yiraki, magu, kanbi and ihambilbilg in various Australian Aboriginal languages.