>There's a dance called Black Nag (Playford 1670). Should we avoid this >in case people think it refers to a nagging black woman?
I don't see why. Doesn't that obviously refer to a horse? Is anyone actually expressing concern about that name? (Besides the fact that any one dance name is heard much less often than the name of a dance figure.) While the dance term "gip" or "whole-gip" of old seems quite possibly not to have had anything to do with the term "Gypsy" in those days, I think that its change to "Gypsy" was a confluence with the racial term, and I think that it's perceived as a racial term in modern times. regards, Alan Rosenthal, dancing in and around Toronto, Canada. _______________________________________________ List Name: Callers mailing list List Address: [email protected] Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
