The base just describes the general appearance of the weapon, the tags narrow that down. It's all fictionally relevant, but only the tags have direct mechanical representations.
I just updated signature weapon for our last playtest, to work more clearly with the current state of weapons. We had a fighter in our game, and it worked pretty well - he had a spear with a smaller blade on the butt, letting him strike at two ranges. It came in handy when the whip-wielding demons showed up.