Realism is a good thing.  If nothing else, it serves as a model of how things will develop.  It is useful to know which weapons really work and how they are used, but it also applies to the stuff you make up.  If you decide to use a bagh nahk even though it is a stupid, useless weapon in real life, and you decide to call it a nekode, consider the stats you give it.  If it is faster than any other weapon and does more damage in a given time and is easier to learn than any other weapon, why would anyone ever want to use a quarterstaff?