Thank you for your reply, NANGI san.
My 1716 wakizashi (Kōgitsune) has various copper fittings which have developed a beautiful patina over the years which is the similar colour to a red fox's fur and of course it is small, so that name seems appropriate!
My 1830 Bizen Osafune katana is unusually long at 2 shaku, 4 sun in blade length which is rare since the average height of a
samurai was about 152cm (5 foot) and that would've been too long to draw for such stature. So I named it 'Yūrei kiri' (ghost cutter) imagining it might've been used for
Shintō purification rites (pure speculation on my part. The samurai who commissioned might've simply been taller than average or had long arms!
My 1547 wakizashi and a pair of tantō from 1700 are refer to by the swordsmith who forged them (Yukihiro and Yoritoki) as I've run out of ideas for names although Yukihiro has a 'shōbu zakuri' blade shape which means iris leaf so I sometimes give it that name.
In 2016, I had a shinken forged for me by a master swordsmith (Enomoto Sadahito) which has a beautiful and unusual ayasugi hada (wavy) metal grain pattern. I love that sword since it was made to my specifications. I love foxes and campaign for their protection here in England (distressingly, illegal fox hunting with hounds still goes on over here) and I know foxes are said to have magical properties in Japanese and indeed Western folklore, so I named it 'Subayai Kitsune' (swift fox) as a wish that
all foxes will easily flee from their hunters and for the incredible speed at which I wield it (
).
I have a huge and massive 2016 forged sword at 2 shaku 5 sun and weighty 1.3kg blade which I was thinking of calling 'Hito kiri' because of the overwhelming presence and sense power it elicits in whoever holds it and film of the same title (I was surprised to see Mishima Yukio played a character in that film!) But it sounds like a vicious and unpleasant name (man/person cutter), don't you think? So I tend to refer to it by the smith's name, 'Kanehisa'. Do
you think 'Hito kiri' might be an appropriate name or does it seem distasteful? I used to be a neuroscientist and anatomist so was thinking of calling it 'brain biter' but am unsure how to render that in the Japanese language. Can you help with this? (I
never bit any brains in the course of my career, incidentally).