During a discussion a friend of mine stated that he did not think that in time period people called bollock daggers, ' bollock daggers'.

Can anyone point to the earliest known use of the name?

I was always under the impression that the name come from the handle looking like it has....uhh....testicles. I think it started around the late to mid 14th century, but I could be wrong about all of that. :wtf: ....McM

Forgot to say,....there's probably no telling what the people from the times called them. ............McM

Medieval people were definitely aware of just what these daggers resembled... The term "ballok knyf" appears in Piers Plowman from the late 14th century.

Sire Johan and Sire Geffrey hath a girdel of silver,
A baselard or a ballok-knyf with botons overgilte.

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/PPlLan/1:16?r...w=fulltext

[ Linked Image ]

Yeah, same signification for the french name dague à couillettes (balls dagger)...

To be honest the term used is simply dagger or knife for most I have seen. At times baselard dagger but it is used in a way that I am not sure if it is any specific type of dagger or what. I do not recall one time I saw the term bollock dagger used in my research in primary inventory docs for the later medieval period in England. So apart for Piers mentioned above I cannot recall much else. So I think we moderns tend to get more of a laugh out of it and make it more into a thing than they did. Did they have daggers like that then, absolutely. Did they call them that? Not very often from what I am seeing. Even in France from what I have seen they simply call them daggers. I've seen dozens of inventories where dagger is left unmark in this fashion. It could be that in conversation you'd call it that but my feeling is people tend to use as short a name as they can and still ID an object so to me dagger it is.

So it'd likely be more proper just to call it a dagger... helps to clarify things.

RPM

Well, David.... There you go......spoken by the experts. With pictures and e'rythang! :lol: ...........McM

David, is it possible that your friend was confused by the fact that the Victorians used to call them "kidney daggers"?