Does “Tekken” sound like “iron sword” to someone unfamiliar with the franchise?


The word “ken” has at least 2 meanings: Ken (拳) means fist, while ken (剣)
means sword.

If a Japanese speaker hears about the video game Tekken (鉄拳, “iron fist”) for
the first time, without seeing the word written down, would they be able to
tell that Tekken refers to “iron fist” and not “iron sword”?

I found [this answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/51759/40499), which
mentions that homophones are sometimes distinguished by the pitch accent.
However, I’m not sure if this applies to monosyllabic words like “ken”. I also
found [this
question](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/40669/difference-in-
ambiguity-between-written-and-spoken-japanese), where answerers point out that
ambiguity is often circumvented in everyday speech. However, I’d like more
specific information on if/how this is achieved in this case.




There is no difference in pitch accent between 鉄拳 and 鉄剣, so it purely depends
on which word is more familiar to laypeople. Neither is particularly common in
daily life, but IMO 鉄拳 is a little bit more familiar because there is a word
鉄拳制裁, which is used outside gaming or history contexts. "Iron sword" is
usually referred to simply as 鉄の剣. It's just a hunch but I think more than
half of Japanese non-gamers think of 鉄拳 first when they hear てっけん with
absolutely no context.

(By the way, on-on compounds do have pitch accents; see [this
answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/57423/5010) for example.)




There is no difference in pitch accent between 鉄拳 and 鉄剣, so it purely depends
on which word is more familiar to laypeople. Neither is particularly common in
daily life, but IMO 鉄拳 is a little bit more familiar because there is a word
鉄拳制裁, which is used outside gaming or history contexts. "Iron sword" is
usually referred to simply as 鉄の剣. It's just a hunch but I think more than
half of Japanese non-gamers think of 鉄拳 first when they hear てっけん with
absolutely no context.

(By the way, on-on compounds do have pitch accents; see [this
answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/57423/5010) for example.)

