Irish history has a bitter account of the evolution of what we today
call the Uillean Pipes. The earlier Englishlanguage reports are peppered with political preference and downright literary bullying though if you look in Irishgaelic writings there were fewer reports porbably due to the famine and other social factors, but these used
the name Uilleann - lit elbow - as the name for the new pipes.

While the Island remained under London, without break there was always an undercurrent of revolution, and these dissenters from the Crown liberaly used native song and dance to broacast. However unfortunely for them but happily for our ears today, HM Governor banned the Irish Pibmor.

The official reason for the ban was the 'seditious' uses of it etc. The musical community soon found other bagpipes which were not loud and thus could not be heard by the 'Forces of The Crown'-allowing pipers to play but quietly-, and during the late 1700s early 1800's native instrument makers, Coyne and Egan, were perfecting the 'long bore' chanter which eventually became the modern Uillean Pipes.

Arguements against the name Uillean are always based on the incorrect
assumtion that because a couple of English speaking Irish instrument makers adopted the term Unionpipe -union of Chanter and Regulators-, there was no debate since the makers must know what they meant to say.
Well that may be true but some other makers didn't do that and most of the musicians as well as the abused piping community soon took to using and Irishgaelic word Uillean. In short no matter what HM officialdom did the native people said 'screw you' and made the issue
an act of sedition as well. Ie those using the words Union were unionists and those Uilleann, republican.