Words, formed by runes on those weapons, were really suspicious to me, so I checked Khazalid runic alphabet:
And it turned out that those were exactly what I’d thought them to be - “OKRI” and “DORI”.
It’s a common practice for human and dwarven (I think) artists and craftsmen to leave signatures on their creations, and this case is no exception.
So, here’s the conclusion. These axes were made by dwarf Okri who’s also Bardin’s cousin and, in fact,
very real and probably very skillfull weapon smith.
I mean, you could also inscribe weapons with the names of people you honor, so Bardin honoring someone on his weapons wouldn’t be out of place. Gotta wonder though, who is Dori? An actual Tolkien dwarfen name in Vermintide?
Also, inscribing weapons with names of living people might be bad practice for dwarfs, as they often (try to) honor their ancestors in their creations, which could mean that Cousin Okri…
Let’s not get into that.
Bit of self advertisment here; if you are interested in other weapons and what their runes mean, here ya go: