Kiwanis Club 
"Why Do We call it 'KNICKERS' "It's a long way from the early knickers to the knee-length breeches that bear that name today. The first knickers (when New York was still New Amsterdam) were clay bricks. The man who baked them was, of course, the 'knicker baker' Like many other occupational names (such as Taylor and Mason), Knickerbaker became a family name, sometimes changed to Knickerbocker. Since the name was so common among the Dutch settlers, Washington Irving used it as the name of the invented author of his book A History of New York, Diedrich Knickerbocker. The illustration shows a person wearing loose knee pants. Such breeches came to be called 'knickerbockers,' which was later shortened to 'knickers'."