The dunmer call themselves that and it would be somewhat odd for one to call himself anything else, the altmer also call them dunmer. From what I've noticed other races tend to use dunmer as much as dark elf, with intellectuals edging towards the former. "Dark elf" jumps out more than dunmer does.
The rest would only apply if I was interested in taking race FOR a class, which is quite lame and treats it like just a "game" and not like an universe to be immersed within, even if immersion is rather lacking in comparison to morrowind.
Race provides small bonuses and "milking" those is min/maxing in a TES game, lame and pointless in an already easy game where the focus shouldn't be only on the subpar combat.
Only races I'm personally interested in playing are imperials and dunmer.
edit: also an imperial mage is hardly minmaxing, only bonuses in resto/destr as I just checked long after making the character
