The vocabulary of old swordmakers all over the world was largely metaphoric. All those Sossun Pattas , Kirk Nardubans, Pesh Kabzes, Bichwas, Jamadhar Kataris etc., did not describe particular weapons in their dry engineering terms, but rather as esthetic/religious/poetic entities.
Without thorough immersion into their contemporary atmospheres ( further complicated by linguistic problems), one cannot fully understand the multilayered depth of meaning of the peculiar names given to old elongated and sharpened pieces of steel.
Even the names of such simple daggers as janbiya and shibriya do not signify "just a knife" :-)
The "name game" is not a useless exercise as some of us think: it is a window into the mind of old masters and warriors.
Through a glass, darkly.....
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