naming a language

[Martin Haspelmath]

"Elfdalian" is clearly the best choice, in my view, primarily because it 
is already established in English: For over 2 years, the Wikipedia 
article on the language has been called "Elfdalian" 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfdalian).

Mikael Parkvall wrote:
> There are plenty of cases where there is a relatively established (in 
> the linguistic literature) English term for a language, where later 
> publications have opted for a new name, and where I can see no other 
> effect than growing confusion. 
Language names, like city names, often have connotations. If the 
speakers want to get rid of the (perhaps negative) connotations and 
promote a new name for their language, that needs to be respected (e.g. 
Nuuchahnulth for Nootka; apparently the speakers don't like the 
traditional term, although it is much more practical). Similarly, if the 
inhabitants of Beijing and Mumbai find it important that their cities 
are known by these names in English, rather than by the names Peking and 
Bombay, again I feel this needs to be respected.

But abandoning an established name, even if the name is known to 
relatively few people, just because of a strange desire to have the 
English name correspond as closely as possible to the endonym, strikes 
me as showing a certain lack of respect for the language and those that 
used the earlier name.

Martin