European daggers are a wee bit outside my area of expertise, however it has always been my understanding that the ballock dagger was the dagger which replaced the basilard, and was primarily a civilian dagger, as was the basilard.
There were instances of it being carried for a military application, but the dagger used by knights to despatch fallen opponents was not the ballock dagger, nor the basilard, but the misericorde.If it had used against an active battlefield opponent, in place of a main gauche, it would have been mightily unsuited to such application, probably being more dangerous to the user than to his opponent.
I was under the impression that it was universally accepted that the name of the ballock dagger arose from its form, not because it was used to inflict damage to the groin.
When you come to think of it, since it enjoyed such popularity as a civilian weapon, the people of that time would have had to have had an obsession with inflicting damage on one another's noble parts for it to have been named for the mode of use.
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