User blog:Nerdvana/Katana, Ninjato and the meaning of words

I found an interesting article about Japanese words that includes the following...

katana What you think it means: A Japanese sword with specific well-known design elements, including a two-handed hilt and a single-edged curved blade.

What it means in Japanese: Any single-edged, curved sword, whether Japanese samurai's sword, French cavalry saber, Persian scimitar, or whatever fits that broad description.

Commentary: The Japanese katana is perhaps most identical to the English "backsword", a name for single-edged swords that's no doubt more obscure to the average English speaker than is "katana". As is often the case with words hoplological, the range of weapons covered by katana isn't crystal clear, but any single-edged sword is likely to fit in there. While katana is written with the single Chinese character 刀, it originally derives from kata (one side) and na (an archaic term for blade). (Incidentally, a more generic Japanese term for sword, whether single- or double-edged, is tsurugi 剣; that word is easily translated into English as the generic "sword".)

So, one sees katana in Japanese applied to any single-edged sword, from anywhere in the world. That includes single-edged Japanese swords as well, of course. But if you want to specify a Japanese single-edged sword in Japanese, you'll do better with nihontou (from nihon 日本, Japan; and tou 刀, a Chinese-derived alternate reading of the character for katana). Something like Nihon no katana or samurai no katana would work too.

Fun note for the geeks: Wikipedia's English Katana page is linked to the Japanese nihontou page, informing Japanese readers that nihontou is what the English speakers actually mean when they say katana. Meanwhile, the Japanese katana page is linked to the English Backsword page, reflecting the actual equivalence of the Japanese word katana with the English word "backsword". (It's also interesting to note that, as of this writing, the Japanese katana page uses an image of a French naval officer saber to illustrate katana. That's a beautiful example of how katana in Japanese does not mean "samurai sword"!)

So "katana" doesn't mean what people think it means and the straight (or nearly straight) bladed swords Leonardo is often pictured with are katanas!