I had a big breakthrough this morning, and after 37 years of cello playing I think I finally understand the dubious logic behind the traditional / Suzuki cello position naming system.
Perhaps it makes sense to other cellists, but not one has been able to explain it to me adequately. Countless students of mine have asked me to explain the reason the positions are numbered as they are, and I’ve shrugged my shoulders. “It’s just how it is,” I’ve had to say.
Ever since studying cello with Laurien Laufman, I’ve used Janos Starker’s chromatic position naming system instead. I find it more sensible than the traditional / Suzuki one.
This biggest mystery with the traditional system has been the existence of “upper” and “lower” versions of some positions, and not others. What’s reason?
For years, my working theory has been that it’s based on the location of accidentals in the diatonic major scale. A Major is perhaps the basis, chosen because of the parallel between that scale and the beginning of the musical alphabet. My reasoning has been: in A major, the first three pitches are A, B and C sharp. C sharp creates an obvious duality with C natural — and therefore there are two possible second positions — the first “lower” second position starting on C natural, and the second “upper” second position starting on C sharp
The trouble was that I also found my working “diatonic major” theory flawed. It reasonably explains the existence of upper and lower second position but not upper and lower fourth position. Why should we consider putting the first finger on the pitch named enharmonically D sharp and E flat as lower fourth position? It could just as well be called upper third position, as neither D sharp nor E flat are in any of the diatonic major scales starting on an open cello string. And if it’s acceptable to have two names for one position, why is this not the case with with the lower positions?
Bang bang went my head into this problem. And then this morning I was sipping coffee and thinking about a beginning violin student in my middle school orchestra, I had the big “aha.”
The position naming system is most likely based on the violin hand and finger shape, which has been carelessly ported over to cello without much thought regarding applicability.
On the violin, the second finger is mobile — it covers two potential pitches. On the A string in first position, these are C sharp and C natural. The second finger has an “upper” and a “lower” position, and this is likely where the nomenclature “upper second position” and “lower second position” comes from!
What’s more, the violin fourth finger is also mobile, covering two possible pitches on the A string: E natural and E flat. Regardless of whether we consider this latter pitch enharmonically as an E flat or a D sharp, it is still played by the fourth finger. Hence the “upper” and “lower” fourth position nomenclature.
And just like that, mystery solved.
I guess it all makes sense on violin. But it’s more clear to me now why this naming system doesn’t make sense on cello — we use different fingerings! And I’m even more certain that Janos Starker’s chromatic-based system is a more sensible alternative.
Hope this helps you on your cello journey!
Rock The Cello 
That’s correct. Quite difficult music was already being written for the violin by the late 17th century, and its repertory was vastly larger than that of the cello. The position system was set up for violinists, because they needed it long before cellists did.
It’s not impossible for cellists to learn this system, though–they have already been doing this for hundreds of years.
The system is set up largely for the older, largely diatonic system. Sharps and flats were often understood, and therefore not notated. C# and C are different pitches, but not different notes, although we often end up calling them “different notes”. “Notes” are marks on the page, pitches are sounds. Ab Bb C Db Eb and A B C D E have the same notes, but not the same pitches.
However, by now “notes” are treated as the same as “pitches”, and we have to say “note name” for what used to be understood as “note”.
Each position moves up one note name. But violinists can play four different notes on one string in each position, whereas cellist can play only three.
The advantage of keeping the same numbering system for positions is that the principle of naming the positions is the same for all instruments. Conductors and teachers of various string instruments don’t have to re-think the principle when talking to string sections.
Thanks for the thoughtful historical perspective! Your comment brings something else to mind. The well-known move away from diatonicism clearly makes a diatonic-based naming system less valuable. But even before the move away from diatonicism, there may have been an *expansion* of diatonic writing in the late classical to more “distant” diatonic keys? So the violin and cello-based diatonic logic of position names tied to the major keys of A, D, G, and C and their relative and parallel minor keys was perhaps already breaking down…