Whimsical enough is the origin of the name of Picards, and from thence of Picardie, which does not date later than A.D. 1200. It was an academical joke, an epithet first applied to the quarrelsome humour of those students, in the University of Paris, who came from the frontier of France and Flanders (Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 447, Longuerue. Description de la France, p. 54).