Quote Originally Posted by oudysseos View Post
In fact, 'Gael' might have been considered an insulting description by the 3rd century BCE people of Ireland, as it appears to derive from Guoidel in Old Welsh, meaning "pirate", or "raider". Perhaps the best description for the Irish in the EB time period would be 'Scoti' or 'Attacoti'. Both appellations are from a later period than EB, but still might be more accurate than 'Gael' or 'Celt'.
Using the modern classification "Gael" or "Celt" doesn't imply that the people so classified used that designation themselves; if we say Old Norse is a Germanic language, that doesn't mean 11th Century Norwegians called themselves Germans. The Attacotti are not Irish (necessarily) they simply got assigned to Ireland or the far North of Scotland because no historian could think of anywhere else they came from, assuming they were a tribe at all - the name suggests "Those who returned to the old ways". As with the Corionototae, it could be mistaking a social or political movement for a tribe.

Another interesting aspect of Insular Celtic is its possible relationship with Punic. From Empires of the Word
For years and years I've heard this bit of wrongness passed on and repeated. It originates in the mid-18th Century with an attempt to show the antiquity of Welsh by demonstrating its proximity with Hebrew, believed at that time to have been spoken in the Garden of Eden and therefore the oldest language in the world. It works by drawing parallels between modern Welsh or modern/mediaeval Irish and either Phoenician or Berber. It omits to mention that all these similarities are only with modern Celtic: they don't work at all when you compare the forms of these languages as we think they were spoken in 200BC.
P.S. I'm not dogmatic about Irish origins just 'cos I'm Irish. I'm sticking with Celt 'cos it seems the best general description, not 'cos my world will collapse if I can't call myself a Celt. I mean, who cares? we're all homo sapiens at the end of the day.
The Irish are called Celts because the Irish language is Celtic. The term comes with a lot more baggage than any other designation, but in the end it only means with certainty Celtic-speakers - after that arguments like this thread start.