>>64238708
In this particular case it's the latter, Solingen pumped out tons of Bowies and he probably saw one and decided that was the origin. I've seen people do that with Sheffield knives too. Frankly "Bowie knife" is a term that casts a far wider umbrella than most people understand so people who talk like it was historically a single design are incorrect from the ground up. In modern context it generally refers to a clip point blade but even then people have gotten spergalicious about size, having a guard, etc. when none of those stipulations existed until fairly recently and have largely been put in place arbitrarily by randos. The same thing happened to the term "dagger" and it's happening with swords as well.

These days I usually just talk about modern knives because a lot of historical conversations and threads about what defines X are full of people just making shit up.