[Mike Ruhala]

14th century German artwork depicts weaponry many of us would call "falchion" but it occurs to me that is a "foreign" word, is anybody here familiar with any text that suggests what a 14th century German might have called it?

[Thomas R.]

That would be Malchus, I guess. In french it may have been Fauchon.

[Victor R.]

I have seen it discussed on this site many times that much of the terminology we associate with different forms of swords and other objects is more of a modern attempt to classify, and that contemporaneous terminology was frequently much more basic. As such, back in the day, I would suggest they may have simply used the term "schwert", perhaps with some modifier that indicated single edged vs. double edged, but maybe not even that; or, perhaps, "messer" since a falchion is a fairly identical blade form, with the difference in our modern classification system being the hilt construction. I believe we tend to overthink and overclassify things in this era.

[Bram Verbeek]

It is called Malchus in "Das Schwert...", and considering that comes from the biblical figure, chances are that term is quite old. In southern Germany and Austria, the greeting "Servus Christi" alledgedly came from Roman times, during christian persecution. They have long memories in their traditions.

[Gottfried P. Doerler]

being austrian, i would also say "malchus".
that was the name of the servant of the high priest caiaphas, whom st. peter chopped off an ear during the arrest of jesus.
allegedly peter used a falchion-like short-sword for this purpose, so the name of the victim went over on this type of sword in german speaking areas.

but as far as i know, falchions were never so popular or common here, in contrast to english/french areas.
imho, the falchion was especially popular in france, where they had several names for it, like fauchon or baudelaire.
in my area, when the fauchon got popular in france in the high-to-late middle ages, other types of blades, that fulfilled the same role, were more catching on, like the messer, or the bohemian dussack.

[Mike Ruhala]