To be sincere, for my experience, Ariel's hypothesis holds far more water than any of the others. First of all, it's well-formulated, uses the data available and works with factors known to have had similar influences in other fields (names given to import products based in those they had in their place of origin. It happens even today). Theories regarding "names" or "marks" on weapons have an undeniable tendency to fall in the direction of what any bazaar seller would instantly recognize as "the coolness factor". You know how this goes, any notch on the handle of a Colt Army must be a man gone down, never a sign of mistreatment. I also tend to be quite sceptic about these stories, and although some of them are true, these tend to be not only somewhat obvious but normally they're also verifiable via some independent sources.
Also, the kind of explanation Ariel's putting forth is also mirrored in other similar cases, like the Canary Islands knife "naife" or the Filipino "punal".
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