Bonnie,

You wrote: Not quite! In the scale of C, all seven modes would begin on C, but each one consists of a different interval structure. All I meant (but probably failed to convey) was to simply keep key (pitches and their relationships, e.g. tonic to dominant) and mode as separate things and identify each property independently of the other.

Actually, I think we're in agreement. What you're describing fits with my nomenclature #2. Specify a home tone, and then use the modal term to indicate the pattern of whole and half steps (and thus the appropriate harmony).

This method also has the advantage of accomodating non-modal scales like blues and pentatonic scales and various non-western scales: they still have a home tone and a pattern of intervals within the octave. It even works for 12-tone music, which uses a chromatic scale.

It occurs to me that the two methods may have their roots in types of instruments used by the various cultures. For instance, if you take a simple folk harp with no levers and tune it to a C major scale you end up with modes following the classical nomenclature system: where each mode starts on a different note but is using the notes of the C major scale: so D dorian is the Dorian_OF_C and so forth. However, instruments with fixed drones tend to build their modes based on a fixed root. Thus with my mountain dulcimer, I tune the drone strings to a fixed tonic and fifth, and adjust the tuning of my melody strings so that the tonic falls on the fret that will give me the pattern of whole and half notes that match the notes in the tune. So in this instance referring to D dorian as the dorian of C is confusing and irrelevant: C major is nowhere in my picture.

Given that much of our current classical nomenclature was codified in the 19th century (based on earlier roots) when the keyboard reigned supreme as the arbiter of pitch and tonality, it is not surprising that the Dorain_OF_C nomenclature took hold. It paid homage to the ancient roots of the system and made sense on a chromatic keyboard. However, now that traditional music is taking its own place and legitimacy, and is expanding beyond the Eurocentric basis of classical music, the folk terminology makes much more sense and is far more flexible.