just a small remark from my side to stating the obvious:
'babelfish' is hardly a reference for the german language of the 19th century.
Luckily, two brothers that are more famous for their collection of folk-tales, compiled a dictionary exactly at that time.
There is no "Eisenhauer" in the dictionary but the meaning of the word "Hauer" is explained in detail:
http://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/wbgui_py?lemma=hauer
There "Hauer" is directly connected with
- miners
- woodcutters
- several tools where just "hammer" would not be appropiate
- any slashing weapon
- the male wild boar
- the fangs of a male wild boar
- someone who strikes
- the act of striking itself
And in combination with a list of prefix words for several other trades (eg. Steinhauer for stone mason)
Strangely there is no mention of smithing there.
Does all this help us in explaining why there is the word "Eisenhauer" on some of the blades? No, it doesn't!
I don't think that there is a linguistic answer to that question. IMHO as long as we don't discover any
contempory text explaining the reason behind putting "Eisenhauer" on the blades we may as well
continue discussing the incription of "+VLFBERH+T" on some 9th century blades...
Best Regards,
Thilo