An Lon Dubh wrote:
Both words have been around for a good while in English.
Perhaps, but it's hard to find any evidence of "Gaelic" ever having been commonly used as the English name of the language in Ireland.
An Lon Dubh wrote:
A good amount of people outside the country, both in other English speaking countries and on continental Europe know it is as "Gaelic"
Indeed. But I'm not sure that really tells us much. In recent centuries, for understandable reasons, the outside world's view of Ireland has largely been filtered through British eyes (news reports on Ireland are normally filed by London-based correspondents for example) and it seems likely that the other countries simply followed British practice. Older continental sources have "Irish" rather than "Gaelic". For example, in
Madame Putiphar, an 1839 French novel with an Irish theme, the characters speak "irlandois".
An Lon Dubh wrote:
I mean it's just a word
Yes, but words are rarely
just words.
An Lon Dubh wrote:
I don't think most people mean to be offensive when they use it
Of course.
An Lon Dubh wrote:
Is there a particular reason you are concerned with its usage.
I'm interested in this kind of thing - word histories, language myths and their origins, and in particular this business of exonyms/endonyms.
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Nah...we call it An Ghaoluinn