well, in my line of work, we use:
mono (one),
oligo (a few),
poly (many) -- Greek prefixes.
e.g.,
monosaccharide
oligosaccharide
polysaccharide
That doesn't help at all, does it?
Stereo is from the Greek for
solid -- the goal of stereophonic reproduction was actually a three-dimensional recreation of a sound field!
(cf. stereo vision or stereochemistry)
The amusing fact is: most stereo recordings (at least in terms of "pop" music) for decades have been what I (and other folks) refer to as
multi-track mono, where many different mics or amplifier feeds are recorded to separate 'tracks' (a vestige of analog tape recording, of course!). Some engineer or producer then mixes those multiple tracks together into a two-track master. What makes it amusing, to me, is when folks talk about the
soundstage that they hear reproduced in these altogether artifactually assembled two-channel reproductions!
Sorry, this is just one of my many
pet peeves nonlinearities.
There are true stereo recordings, but they're few and far between (and usually pretty astonishing, when properly reproduced).
And then there's the special case of
binaural recordings for headphones
(not to mention Bob Carver's
Sonic Holography and Matthew Polk's
Stereo Dimensional Array)