Having used a round handled blade as a machete, I recommend an oval handle. This was a straight blade. Where the handle is round, and the blade is curved towards the back, and the handle follows this curve, then a round handle is OK - hitting something will not tend to make the sword twist in your grip. Even with a straight blade, if you go to draw-cut, cutting with the grip leading and the point trailing, you'll get the same effect (i.e., lack of ill-effect from the round grip). Chopping with a straight blade with round grip is bad.
A lot of single-edged polearms have oval-section hafts. The Japanese naginata and plenty of Chinese polearms come to mind. On European polearms, hafts were often flattened octagonal or rectangular (as noted above).
Round is lighter from the same stiffness in the weakest direction (all directions will be equally weak for a round pole, neglecting effect of grain of wood). Keeping the weight down will matter for long polearms.
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