"but a fiddle is always a violin" (IB)...that's ethnocentric - if not fiddlesticks!

Not in the slightest, WAV. Fiddle is an informal English word (however so derived) meaning violin. It is ethnocentric to apply the word fiddle to the bowed stringed instruments of other cultures, as you have done, for whatever reason.

Thanks, Nerd for the expansions. I was going to mention the gardon of Gyimes - see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXuRrG4wmUo