A picayune was a Spanish coin, worth half a real or one sixteenth of a dollar.
Its name derives from the French picaillon, which is itself from the Provençal picaioun, the name of an unrelated small copper coin from Savoy.
Spanish dollars were made legal tender in the U.S. by an act on February 9, 1793.
[5][6] A newspaper published in New Orleans since the 1830s, the Times-Picayune (originally The Picayune), was named after the coin.
[7] A city in southern Mississippi has the name Picayune.