What it boils down to is this: we have a word, "ceilidh", which has been established in its current English usage for decades (I can vouch for it being well established in the early 1970s). It is known even outside the folk fraternity as meaning a folk dance event. Within the folk world, it has additional layers of meaning which convey the types of dances, style of dancing and style of music to expect. It's a useful word.

WAV doesn't like this word because it has been borrowed from another language. However the strength and flexibility of the English language comes from its willingness not only to invent new words but to borrow from other languages - the dictionary is full of such words.

I can see where he's coming from, and if this discussion had been taking place before "ceilidh" became established in the English language I might have had more sympathy with his point of view, but the fact is that he's at least 40 years too late. This horse has long bolted.

Not only does he want us to stop using a single well-established word which has a specific meaning, he wants to replace it with three words which already mean something entirely different.

And with respect to his godmother, her experiences of doing "English Country Dances" at school in, at a guess, the 1920s or 30s tell us nothing about the actual live tradition, then or now. Whatever her adult contemporaries were doing on Saturday nights in the village hall, I'd lay money they didn't call it an "English Country Dance".