Symbols on tang

[Nothing]

I practice Hapkido. In such - we learn to use a sword. I bought my sword before I knew anythign about a sword (still don't know much). ANyway I took it apart to study the different pieces. I noticed that the tang (part that goes into the handle) has 3 symbols on it. I am wondering if there is a place where I could figure out what they mean. Just curious about my sword.

TIA,

Nothing

 

[MBuzzy]

There are many places which could tell you that. I would assume that they are either Chinese, Korean, or Japanese characters indicating the forge name or something. If you can take a picture or draw them accurately or something, I am sure that one of our members can translate for you.

 

[howard]

Try here.

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

I'll try to explain...

I'm assuming that the three symbols you're referring to are Chinese characters. If they are, you can go to the "radicals" submenu on the left side of the page and try to find the characters. (Look for a series of strokes that you can identify, which would be a radical. Then look for the radical in the radical chart, then look for the characters that contain that radical...when you find the character, click on it, and you'll see the English translation.)

Traditionally, these characters on the tang were known as the "mei" in Japanese. They were the signature of the smith who made the sword.

Hope this helps... good luck.

 

[MBuzzy]

If you do go the route of trying to examine it yourself, I use the site that howard already posted as well as this one: http://zhongwen.com/ Between them, I can find just about anything - radicals can be VERY tricky though! There are many characters which you would NEVER expect what the radical is, so it may take some time there. On the left hand menu, there is a radical selection that may make this easy for you.

Recall that some Chinese names are going to sound weird to us, for example, a name may just be three words, such as friend, tree, star. The three characters that you found are either an individual's name or the name of the forge.

 

[Nothing]

All - thank you for the help. I did find them on the site listed.
Guang Shi Zuo is what it translates to. Must be some name of someone.

 

[Nothing]

Is there anyway to tell what company made my sword with this information?

 

[MBuzzy]

Would you mind copying and pasting the Chinese characters from those sites into this page?

I would assume that those characters are actually a person's name and not a company. Depending on where the sword came from, quality of the sword, etc....it may not have been a company in the sense of the word that you think. The best you may be able to do is just the man's name who forged it.

 

[Nothing]

光世作

The above are an the tang. Below is what is on the Tsuba (hand guard) - right???

豊臣秀 plus one other symbol that I have nto found yet.

 

[Charles Mahan]

Your best bet would be to repeat this query over at http://www.swordforum.com A lot of collectors hang out there, and those are the folks most likely to be able to help with this.

There's a good chance that what you have is just a brand name stamped onto the nakagao rather than a smith's signature.

 

[howard]

光世作

光 - light, brilliant, shine

世 - life, age, generation, era, world, lifetime

作 - make, work, compose, write, act, perform

Running the three characters together through Google Translate comes up with "light for the world". I'd note that Google Translate is only partially reliable. I've used it to try to translate the Korean names of our hapkido techniques (which are basically explanations of what the technique does), and more often than not come up with gibberish.

Below is what is on the Tsuba (hand guard) - right???

豊臣秀 plus one other symbol that I have nto found yet.

Feng Chen Xiu - this could well be somebody's name. The first character is a variation of the surname Feng. The second and third characters have individual meanings on their own, but you'd need to find somebody who understands Chinese to know for sure whether it's somebody's name or a phrase of some sort.

Could you contact the vendor who you bought the sword from for help?