...i guess it comes down to the western mind's penchant for being too specific sometimes (i.e., it 's assault and battery since while he was verbally threatening you he stepped on your pinkie toe...).
looking back at my old posts, i did asked a lot of questions in regards to terms used on these sundangs, some i've heard before, and some that are news to me. when i went back last year and actually spent some time in the inland of Panay (small farming towns like ajuy, tanduyan, tinori-an, etc) and hooked up with friends i haven't seen in decades, i brought with me pictures of these old visayan sundangs for identification. i was reintroduced by them to their fathers and grandfathers, same manongs that use to scold us for teasing the carabaos when we were kids, lol. ahhh, good ol' days...
anyhow, it's funny how they referred to those sundangs as binangon, regardless on how the blade is shape. i guess, they were looking at the general form of the sword. even after pointing out the difference on how the blade is shaped, it didn't matter. as zel pointed out before, go to a different province in that island, and the same sundang is called sanduko, or talibong. then going back to manila, the term binangon is as alien as tombak; the same sundangs are now known as itak, lol. the meaning behind the 'diety' hilt is something that is still a bit of a mystery, tho. maybe, that's another example on how we scrutinize every single detail on how it came to be....
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