Dayak dagger...is it a Sadop??

[David]

Originally Posted by Maurice

When I look at the pictures of Schmeltz, I see a similar picture of a dagger Charless has and there it is called a "Djoembia".
It looks like the same curved blade as seen above. (Taf. XVIII, nr 3a & 3b).

Maurice, you are ALWAYS going to find multiple names and spellings on ethnographic weapons. But i am sure you can see that "Djoembia" is phonetically the same as "Jambiya" and "Djambeih". But to some it is a Baladau. So we really only have 2 names for this blade then, not 4. That's not really too bad.
In America you have the "hood" of a car, in England it's called a "bonnet". And that is (supposedly ) the same language. Nothing has "strict names". In tribal societies that are genetically and even linguistically tied there is often quite a bit of variation in how a specific tribe might name something. Who is to say which tribe has the "correct" name for that object? It's all relative to location and the people. For me this doesn't make things harder necessarily, though it does make them more complicated and in my opinion, more interesting.