Clauson’s terminological rebellion
It has been a minor irritation that the late Sir Gerard Clauson used the term “Turkish” to refer to the entire Turkic family, thus his An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-13th Century Turkish somewhat unexpectedly covers all early Turkic languages and not just words from Anatolia. But in reading his paper ‘The Turkish Y and Related Sounds’ (in the Festschrift Studia Altaica: Festschrift für Nikolaus Poppe zum 60. Geburstag) I finally saw his reasoning for this choice:
I use “Turkish”, not in the limited meaning of ‘the language of Turkey’, but as a generic term for all the languages geneticly related to the language of the Türkü Dynasty (6th to 8th Cent. A.D.), from whose name the word is of course derived, including those anterior to that date. In other words I use “Turkish” where some other scholars use “Turkic”, a word which seems to me open to the objection that if the Greek adjective tourkikos is to be used in English it must be transcribed consistently either as “Turcic” or “Turkik”, both of which look grotesque.
I’m sorry, but that’s just daft.