Well, the origin of the term “gun” dated back in the 14th century. One possible origin was a large ballista which was mounted on Windsor Castle, named Domina Gunilda. This name actually derived from an Old Norse woman’s name, Gunnhildr.

Anyway, there was another word named “gonne” which was first used in a Latin document, written around 1339. Well, guns of the era have other terms too, such as schioppi and donrebusse (this term was incorporated into the English language as blunderbuss, which was possibly the grandfather of shotguns). By the way, the term “hand gun” was first used to refer a gun’s handle.

Anyway, if we renamed all firearms to “Gun”, it will be extremely hard for people to recognize it. Why? Because there’s a lot of gun models produced.