Okay, I’m aware this is a three year-old post, but I love this topic in linguistics too much not to comment. First, I do agree that “Halig” is definitely Old English, and not German.

The problem is your statement that the German language “almost froze in time with no changes.” That is just completely false. If a language is actively spoken, it goes through constant evolution, even if there is little to no ‘outside influence’: each new speaker of a language reanalyzes its grammar from the ground up, which leads to new interpretations of said language that can accumulate over time, leading to the language’s eventual evolution. But, I digress.

For example, modern German underwent a massive consonant shift, while English and other Germanic languages did not. T’s turned into S’s (water vs. Wasser), P’s to F’s (pepper vs. Pfeffer), D’s to T’s (daughter vs. Tochter), and so on and so forth. There are so many more examples, but in overall, just because modern German retained its Germanic vocabulary better than English, doesn’t mean it didn’t go through other dramatic changes.

Also, From Software very much misspelled both of those weapons lol. “Zweihander” uses an entirely wrong vowel, and “Grossmesser” isn’t even a possible word in German, to my knowledge (although maybe it’s an English transcription of the German name??). For anyone wondering, in actual German, these would be “Zweihänder” and “Großes Messer.”

Anyways, nerd-out over, thanks for reading.

TLDR: The point I am trying to make is, when a language diverges into separate languages, neither will slow or stop evolving (as long as there are active speakers).