We hear both terms, but which is correct? I have chosen to use the term Scotch-Irish. The current popluation of Scotland prefers to refer to themselves as Scots. But, they have very little if anything to do with those people from Scotland, who moved to Ireland and later to America. The term Scotch-Irish was used in America as early as the mid-1700s to describe a certain segment of the American population, and as one scholar on the subject suggests "...in this country [USA], where they have been called Scotch-Irish for over two hundred years, it would be absurd to give them a name by which they are not known here... Here their name is Scotch-Irish; let us call them by it." (qtd. in Wikipedia and attributed to Wayland F. Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial America, University of North Carolina Press, 1944.)
Read this essay, "Scotch-Irish or Scots-Irish: What's in a Name?", for a deeper look into the reason why Scotch-Irish is the correct term.
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