Does “Tekken” sound like “iron sword” to someone unfamiliar with the franchise? The word “ken” has at least 2 meanings: Ken () means fist, while ken () means sword. If a Japanese speaker hears about the video game Tekken (, “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, 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, 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 and , so it purely depends on which word is more familiar to laypeople. Neither is particularly common in daily life, but IMO is a little bit more familiar because there is a word , which is used outside gaming or history contexts. "Iron sword" is usually referred to simply as . It's just a hunch but I think more than half of Japanese non-gamers think of first when they hear with absolutely no context.

(By the way, on-on compounds do have pitch accents; see this answer for example.)