Why is it called labialisation and not roundedness

Question

I strongly feel that “Labialised” consonants aren’t really labialised, and perhaps “rounded” consonants would be a more suitable term, given that you can have a “labialised labial plosive”, which makes no sense, how do you labialise an already labial consonant? Unless I’m mistaken, you can’t have a “palatalised palatal plosive”. Plus, the term “labialised” doesn’t tell you that you round your lips when saying it, which is the whole difference. So why isn‘t it called “roundedness”?

Answer 1

The tradition of naming phonetic properties has favored using anatomically-based terminology, so if you read linguistic works of the 19th century you will find exclusive use of words like "labialized", "palatalized", "gutturalized": emphasizing the thing that creates the result, and not what the result looks like. I don't know what shape-related word would apply to other articulations. The tern "rounded" is used in some circles, especially in phonology, because we are now more aware that rounding is just one variety of labialization. If you are referring to name of the diacritic ʷ in IPA (note that vowels are deemed to be "rounded"), extant terminology is kept as is until they vote to change it.