Jim,
Some of your questions seem to have answers. Mostly , it is a matter of ethnic origin.
Dirk ( or dork, or durk) is considered to relate to Germanic word Dolch, whereas Dagger clearly stems from the Latin group : Dague of Old French or Italian Daga.
Different sosun patas were all "lily leaves", i.e. sharing similar blades, not handles. The Deccani form is a Sailaba; quite likely that swords from the same group but from different localities also had specific local names, but we might have forgotten them.
Salavar ( in "Salavar yataghan") is clearly an English transcription of Selaava ( see earlier in this discussion) and "yataghan" was just added by the Brits from a very familiar to them Ottoman short sword with recurved blade ( see post by Kronkew). And BTW, are Selaava and Sailaba related?
In linguistics ethnicity is destiny: Bichwa is Baku or Vinchu, khandjar is Chhurri or Chaku in different regions (examples taken from Elgood's glossary).
And I am not talking already about Indonesian islands:-)
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