From here. They’ve got a detailed history of playing cards. It’s verified on other sites as well; just google for “playing card david charlemagne” or something to that extent.
It seems that those wacky cheese-eating surrender monkeys were a little creative.
HOWEVER.
Our good friend Snopes has an article on this in which they say that this is false, but:
In summary, the French thought it’d be nice to name the cards, but the rest of the world didn’t care, and the practice died out.
(Also, on preview, I find that yabob beat me to the punch. This is the last time I research a question before answering it…)