It's tricky -- I know that during renaissance times any sword that wasn't a rapier was basically called a longsword or broadsword. That kind of carried over into the 1800's, but nowadays we have a slightly different broadsword-arming sword/bastard sword/long sword/great sword categories. It's all semantics in the end, and likely to change again in the future.
We'd better hush now though, lest they move this to the realism dungeon discussion thread and we are trapped there for eternity.