I'm hoping especially to hear from Bríd Mhór and other native speakers here. I'd really like to hear what their impression of this topic is, though I'm happy to hear any input anybody else might have too.

I recently noted somebody coining a neo-Old-Irish term, "ingen léigind" for use in a textbook. Discussing this textbook, they wrote Maicc ⁊ Ingena Léigind and translated it simply "students", without any further commentary explaining that this is a backpropagation from Modern Irish "iníon léinn", or that it would never have actually been used in Old Irish. While considering this it occurred to me that I've never actually heard a native speaker using the term "iníon léinn", only L2 speakers who presumably first came across the term "mac léinn" and then extrapolated the possibility of "iníon léinn" from it.

So, my questions are as follows. Do native speakers actually use the term "iníon léinn"? If not, then how would the term be perceived by native speakers if heard in conversation or seen in writing? Is it considered offensive by native speakers to apply the term "mac léinn" to a woman in the modern day? If so, what alternative is used instead? If not, then is "mac léinn" simply perceived to be a unisex term, despite its lexical elements?

I'm slow to accept any coinage as good Irish if it's used almost exclusively by L2 speakers, much less incorporate it into my own vocabulary, but I certainly don't want to be going around causing any offence by stubbornly refusing to use a term if it is considered an acceptable alternative by native speaking communities.

Iníonn léinn - I’ve never heard that before, from neither a native nor a non-native.
To me it just sounds ridiculous.

It’s never occurred to be until now that people might think of “mac léinn” as a male only term.
Maybe when the term was first used it was almost exclusively men who studied but that’s not the case today. In English it’s just “student”. Or in languages where nouns have a gender étudiant / étudiante etc.

It’s common in Irish and British English to use occupations with “man” in them, like “fireman”, it doesn’t mean women are excluded. I don’t think anybody here uses the American “firefighter”.

The word “altra” is officially used now instead of “banaltra”, it still sounds odd to native speakers.


.

Thanks for the insight Bríd. I wish I had that kind of intuition, that I could just know how a term is naturally interpreted.

It's interesting to see you bring up banaltra too. I recall that being used by men to refer to themselves (not professional nurses, but taking care of sick grandchildren) when I was a teen in Béal Átha an Ghaorthaidh. I wasn't sure if that was just a sign of my advancing age, or if this is still just the general term used in Gaeltachtaí. Ó Dónaill gives "banaltra fir" as specifically "male nurse", which always suggested to me that the "ban-" element in banaltra wasn't suggestive of any gender anymore. I do notice that nobody who has ever suggested to me that there is a problem with the term banaltra has ever suggested the same for English nurse, despite its etymology. I kind of assume that it's just that lack of intuition for how the word is naturally interpreted causing L2 speakers to overanalyse its components, but because they speak English natively, they do interpret "nurse" as simply meaning nurse, and don't feel the need to piece it apart or trace it back to its very-gendered Latin roots; nutrire/nutrix.