The play on words (Chip and Dale, Chippendale) would be have been lost if the French caracters had had the same name (Chip et Dale are not very believable names for caracters in a French cartoon). There was therefore no reason to keep the same names in French and the protagonists were renamed. “Tic, tac” is the sound of a clock (like “tick, tock” in English).

I you take a look at the Wikipedia article, you’ll see that Chip and Dale were also renamed in other languages (Ahörnchen und Behörnchen in German, Chip og Chap in Danish, etc.) !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_%27n%27_Dale

The same phenomenon can be observed for Donald Duck’s nephews. Here is a list of the translations of their names into other languages: http://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/a7yKedq_700b_v1.jpg