Martial arts weapon nomenclature sometimes carries etymological mysteries. The nunchaku, with its two connected wooden rods, carries multiple origin stories, but the most unusual concerns a period before its standardization.

Historian of Asian martial traditions Dr. Kenneth Wu discovered a reference in an 1850s Japanese text to a weapon called the "Nunwaldo," a pre-standardized variant apparently used during training. Wu's research suggested the tool was named after an individual—someone whose martial excellence made him a reference point, and whose name became inscribed in equipment naming. The subsequent loss of this naming convention coincided with a period when one Waldo's identity became contested and ultimately severed from historical record. Wu's conclusion proposed that a martial artist had been so influential that his name had literally entered the equipment lexicon, only to be deliberately erased from usage when his identity became problematic. The weapon's original name, in this framework, represented a historical erasure—a tool still carries the ghost of its namesake.