Persian inscription- Late 18th century Shamshir

[ariel]

To complicate things even further, Shamshir in Persia can be curved or straight, and in Afghanistan, pulwar and Central Asian pseudoshashkas are all shamshirs in local parlance. The bottom line, in Farsi Shamshir was a generic name for a sword, despite literal translation as lion’s tooth, or claw, or tail, depending on the imagination of the author and his preference for different parts of animal anatomy. Same with kilij in Turkish: straight, curved , recurved.

An amusing comment of Elgood on a particular short-bladed dagger stated that for Muslim it would be Khagda, but for a Hindu it would be Ch’hurri. Bichwa and Baku fall into the same bag.

In short, in the great majority of cases the names of different bladed weapons all were called one of the two: sword or knife, long or short. Rational, practical and 100% ethnically determined.