In rereading your response Nihl, I think you deserve a bit more detail. I must say that fear, ignorance and unwillingness to learn are terms I have never in my life had directed at me, regardless that you claim they are meant openly you obviously include me in your 'comments'. I have written here for 25 years in order to learn, and to study WITH others. The idea behind research is to NOT be ignorant, always open to ideas, willing to listen, and to advance the core of knowledge on topics by comparing and evaluating evidence. I have always believed that we learn together, and insults are what is not helpful.
In view of your editorial, I thought perhaps you might like to look in on the concurrent thread, "back to Laz Bicagi' which you might find compelling.
Here, if you are not familiar, is a weapon which first appeared in the collecting community back in the 90s, when I first acquired one. These were pretty much unknown and a few sundry catalogs called them SE Asian; North African and other completely wrong identifications.
I first began to find information on these in a quite obscure paper on "the Origins of the Shashka" (Jacobsen & Triikman, Copenhagen, 1941). It took some time to get this translated but when I did (through the Danish Arms Society) these curious 'yataghans' were included. I found that the 1941 article (1897 article by J. Vichy Budapest) was Hungarian and these were called kardok, among other similar examples.
I then found one in a German reference "Schwert Degen Sabel" (Gerhard Seifert, 1962) which he termed a Kurdish-Armenian yataghan.When asked he said this was what his mentor, Mr. Jacobsen told him in 1941.
I found other references calling these transcaucasian yataghans. As I researched the examples in various museums, I found they had been collected in various locations such as Trebizond, Erzerum. I also found a contact in Tblisi who indicated these were well known in Georgia, but that they were indeed from transcaucasian areas.
There were discussions here over years where they became known as
Black Sea yataghans. Over the past 15-20 years that is what they have been called. Then we found that these were primarily a weapon of the Laz and the term bichag =knife.
Now it seems it is suggested to call them by another term.
When it comes to trying to learn on a weapon form, research and investigation constantly to find facts is hardly unwillingness to learn, and the number of guys here who were also busily seeking facts also sought to learn.
If you look at the archived material here, I would tread carefully using the word ignorance. I will not even dignify the vapid use of 'fear'.
When I noted, people in certain regions do not use consistent or specific terms for weapons in use when conversing. That was the purpose of the anecdote on the 'kaskara' broadsword of the Sudan. Nobody in Sudan or Ethiopia for that matter has any idea what a 'kaskara' is. I spent several years researching that. I had added these anecdotes and analogies in hopes that you would be willing to consider them. Perhaps many of these are in areas of study you are not familiar with, but I hoped they were explained well enough to illustrate the connection.
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