Alan - thanks for clarifying the meaning of pawakan and other adjacent terms. You raise a very insightful point regarding the word "pawakan" and how it suggests that the keris is not perceived as inanimate in the Javanese mind.
If it is not perceived as inanimate, then pawakan (not to mention wanda) seems to me to be a very important concept when it comes to describing things about the keris that we can see with our eyes. We might then be going some levels deeper with wanda and batin, where batin seems to be approaching a perception of a keris' essence.
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Bjorn has provided us with a list of categories for pawakan. According to Alan's definition perhaps these categories and words are better described as words related to wanda. But they were helpful for me to at least think of a question about categories and classifications when it comes to the keris and what purpose they serve.
The tangguh system uses the names of historical, sometimes mythical, polities or (pseudo)geographical places. The tangguh system may have served the purpose of making a judgment on a kerises value based on whether there is honour associated with that keris' classification.
So, off the back of that, some questions that I'd like to ask about pawakan.
* Is it a system like tangguh, where it has a finite list of categories that might be represented by Javanese words referring to physical features?
* Would a student learn this by way of referring to kerisses considered to be archetypes or standards, and sighting or handling many over a learning lifetime?
* Does it serve a social or practical purpose other than to have a specific lexicon by which to describe kerises, in the same way that tangguh has a purpose and lexicon?
* Does understanding and knowing how to classify pawakan (or tangguh, or wanda, or batin) mean that one understands the keris? (what even does it mean to understand the keris?)
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