greywether wrote:

> The actual entymology here is more a matter of academic interest.

and Kammer wrote:

> Gaelic, like Welsh has it's own set of phonetics, and 'Callanish' doesn't make sense using Gaelic
> phonetics (just like 'taxi' makes no sense in Welsh).

exactly on both points! Calanais is the way Callanish is spelt in Gaelic to get the same pronounciation - "ais" being pronounced "aysh" in Gaelic. it's not some attempt to at re-Gaelicisation, just rendering the name in a phonetically-correct way for Gaelic.

in a similar way, the Gaelic word "telebhisean" isn't an attempt to deny the Greek origin of "television", but since there's no "v" in Gaelic, "telebhisean" - pronounced the same way as the English "television" - the spelling has to be changed to make it phonetically-correct for Gaelic-speakers

Cheers
Andy S