French Tile Playing Cards

I have attached two photos of the playing card tiles. It is a full set of 52 tiles. There are four kings, queens and jacks…..no aces as they apparently appeared later in the evolution of playing cards….what would be the aces are just the number "1" tiles.

The face cards have names inscribed next to the images. Here is a list of the names inscribed:

Kings Queens: Jacks:

Spades is David Spades is Pallas Spades is Hogter
Diamonds is Cesar Diamonds is Rachael Diamonds is Hector
Hearts is Charles Hearts is Judith Hearts is Lahire
Clubs is Alexandre Clubs is Argine Clubs is Lancelot

The white tile material is unknown ….we think it could be ivory or bone. Each tile has a brad through it to hold the tile and under piece together. We are not sure what the under piece is either. Some research performed on the internet described certain tile cards as reflecting the names of people common to a specific area.

We wondered about the names on the Queens and Jacks…other than Lancelot the other names are unknown to us. We took these to the Antique Road Show in Kansas City and the expert had never seen these before.

The card game tiles were purchased by my wife's Uncle Don (now deceased) in London. Our common friend Cindy thought there were of French origin dating back to the 1700's.