A nickname for dollar is buck, pound is quid, and Swedish krona is spänn.
What are some casual nicknames for your countries' currencies? Are there multiple, and if so, which is the most common?
44 comments
There isn’t really any that caught on since we’ve got the Euro. Sometimes people say “Euri” as a mock latin plural. We used to call the guilder a “piek” and though people would occasionally use that for the Euro in the early days that seems to have died out.
For euros, in portugal, we usually say “paus” which means sticks. so
“Tens ai 2 paus que me emprestes?” -> “Do you have 2 euros to spare?”
Doesnt work for a singular euro, just plural.
Quid for the pound, the 5p used to be called a bob when it was still seen the same as a shilling but that’s now very rare, and the £5 and £10 note get an -er suffix on the value as a nickname, fiver and tenner
Balles/boules which means bullets/balls. “Je me suis pris une amende de quatre vingt balles” = I got an eighty bullets/balls fine. It’s not so much a nickname of the currency but a slang word for a unit of currency. Whether that currency is euros, franks, dollars, doesn’t matter.
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Here in greece many people still call euros “francs”. When someone is rich they say “he has a lot of francs”
We don’t have any nicknames for the currency itself «kroner» is just the name. We do however have nicknames for specific amounts, I.e. 4 løk(4 onions) = 4000, or Laken(sheet) also meaning 1000, I.e. 3 Laken = 3000
I think “Euronen” is the only thing I think of for Euros, comes from “Dublonen” (dubloons).
Other than that there’s lots of colloquialisms for money in general in German. Knete (dough), Kohle (coal), Mäuse (mice), Zaster (idek how to translate that one, I think “loot” would be the most accurate?)
Is it common in other languages to just say the number instead of the currency? Like in Spanish and English “two eighty five” is fine instead of “two euros eighty five cents” – but in Japanese we never say that it’s always “にひゃくはちじゅうご円” like “two hundred and eighty five yen” in full.
1000 units of a currency is called “jur” in Slovenian, but we don’t have any other nicknames.
For example “pet jurjev” meant 5000 SIT (20.86 EUR) in the past, but now it means 5000 EUR.
We have a few for different values – for small values we (very occasionally) use “kačka” (which is more like diminutive word for koruna, but also means “a duck”), for 100 we use “kilo” (kilo), for 1000 “tác” (tray) or “litr” (liter).
So if someone says “Dej mi 2 kila” (give me 2 kilos) or “Dej mi 5 litrů” (give me 5 liters), he really wants 200czk and 5000czk.
In Spain it is “pavos”. I heard that it goes back to when a turkey (pavo) used to cost like 5 pesetas, and that became a reference point for the currency.
For 1, 2 and 5 Cent coins we germans sometimes use “Braungeld” or “Braunes Geld” (Brown money).
Also, the 50€ note is called “Fuffi” (as a shorter version of “Fünfziger”).
Euro. Sometimes people say Euri as a mock plural.
5,2 and 1 cent coins are commonly called “ramini” as they have a copper color (copper is “rame” in italian, so it is like “small coppers”).
Then there’s the Roman dialect way of naming money. As I am from Rome, i’ll tell you because it is quite funny
5 euros is a “scudo”, because the ancient note of the then Papal States was called scudo (shield) as well.
100 euros (before, 100.000 lire) is a “piotta”, rarely a “fella”, from the value of an ancient Papal coin of the 19th century.
1000 euros (before, 1mln lire) is a “sacco” (sack), as it is a lot of money.
Multiples are used as well, so mezza piotta (half a piotta) means 50 euros, 2 sacchi means 2000 euros and so on. But for scudi they’re not used, idk why
Złocisz, Zeta and Cebulion for PLN
Zeta used to be popular in 1990s and 00’s mostly used by young people. Right now people use official name but sometimes, epsecially if person likes memes they use złocisz and cebulion.
In Finland, euro is called “ege”, and the dollar is “taala”. Small change is “hilu”.
Two euros and change = “kaks egee ja hilut”
Stutz for the Swiss Franc. Fünfliber for a 5 Franc coin. But Stutz is more general, you can say “Ich han kei Stutz” as I don’t have any money
“Gold coin” for the one and two dollars coin, i.e., a gold coin donation. . But that’s it as far as I’m aware
In the Geman speaking part: Stutz (Why? Nobody really knows). Also Stei (Stone) or Hebel (Lever). Money itself can be Chies (gravel) or Chöle (Coal).
A 5 franc coin is a Schnägg (Snail) or a Föifliber (five livres), a 100 Francs note would be a Lappen (Rag), 1000 Francs an Ameisi (Ant, used by those whihc remember the old bank notes) or a Tonne (ton), and 1 Million Francs would be a Chischte (Box).
Kall, which means man. It has quite specific uses though. It can be used for our all coins, except the 1 króna coin. Also, we would only use it for like “whole” hundreds or thousands. So we would say 100 kall or 2000 kall, but never 147 kall or 2350 kall.
No nicknames that I’m aware of, but some older people still call Hryvnias “rubles” as a habit from Soviet times
In Spain is pretty common “pavos”, I believe because of the movies, but where I live I have also heard “ñapos” which does have no actual meaning besides of money
I don’t think we have one for our own, but foreign currency, at least the less important ones, are collectively known as “gærninger” (crazies)
In Ireland, there’s a few. We use quid, we’d also use blip and yoyo(s). Then we do use tenner for ten euro like the English would. Squid instead of quid sometimes too.
In old west germany there were some nicknames for coins.
Like the Heiermann for the 5 Deutsche Mark coin. The most linguistically well-supported explanation suggests that it derives from the Hebrew letter **ה**, the fifth letter in the alphabet. Another theory links the term to the word Heuer / wages, five gold marks were a common signing bonus paid to sailors.
The 10 Pfennig coin was also called a Groschen, some call 10 Euro-cents a Groschen to this day. This term has been around forever for different kinds of coins.
Well, we have “Jyske Dollars” (Jutlandic dollars) in Denmark, often meaning money that the government doesn’t know is changing hands.
There are some nicknames for money in germany like Kohle (coal), Knete (plasticine) or Moos (moss). But for Euro, the only term that comes to mind is “Ocken”. And to be honest, I don’t know what it means.
In Estonian people say “Euri”, it’s a slang partitive case of euro. The actual partitive case of euro is “eurot”.
When you say “This costs 10 euros”, you use the partitive case in Estonian so it’s the most common name for euro in Estonian. “See maksab 10 euri”
Dollar has a slang name “taalad” in Estonian.
“This costs 10 dollars”: “See maksab 10 taala”
When the Deutsche mark used to exist it was called DEM, the currency code. The Finnish markka was called FIM.
“I have 10 DEM and 5 FIM”: “Mul on 10 demmi ja 5 fimmi”
When the Euro was introduced at a rate 1€ = 1.95583 DM, many people felt that price tags only switched out the currency sign and everything became much more expensive suddenly. They called the new currency Teuro which is a pun on teuer=expensive.
Some people still do it 23 years later.
Our one dollar coin is called a loonie (because it has a picture of a loon engraved on one side, which led to the two dollar coin being called a toonie.
A thousand dollars is called a grand, $2000 would be two grand, etc. That’s been around since the early 1900s.
Balles (bullets) was the nickname for French francs and it has been passed directly to euros. You’ll say “ça coûte 20 balles” (it costs 20 euros) or people will ask you “t’as pas 2 balles ?” (Do you have 2 euros) by which they ask you to give them the 2 euros.
To add on to Swedish currency nicknames we have for the 1000kr bill: “lax” (for the pink color of the old bill) and “lakan” (for the bigger size of the old bill).
I’m italian and in my city much people calls them “Razzi”. That’s the italian word for “rockets”.
I don’t know why and i think it’s a thing only in the city I live in.
In hungary there is no nick name for the currency but 2 Forints is somtimes called Bélás (Béla is a male name) and 1000 Forints is called lepedő(=bedsheets) like 4 lepedő = 4000 HUF
In Spain the most common nickname is “pavos” (turkeys)… I read an article that it has to do with the fact that there used to be a specific coin whose value was the same as that of a turkey, the nickname stuck for that coin, and it was carried over to the Euro. Idk if that’s true or not but the name is quite common.
There are none where you don’t sound like you live in the 70s. But here goes:
First is the same word for kicking or tension, last one is the same word as grains.
Former is used all over the country, latter is more south East around the capital.
Edit: Just remembered: Løk (means onion) or Laken (means sheet, as in a bedsheet) is a 1000 kroner.
Danmark here:
Fisk (fish) – 50 dkr. use to be a fish on the old Bills
Hund (dog) – 100 dkr. short for hundrede(hundred)
Plov (plough) – 500 dkr. use to be a plough on the old Bill
Laks (salmon) – 1000 dkr. salmon colour Bill (out fased now. 500 is the highest amount)
We still sometimes use the old ROL values even when talking in new RON values.
So 100 RON could still be called a million because it is the equivalent of 100 000 000 ROL
JMF, aka “Jó magyar forint” for Forint (Good Hungarian Forint)
I don’t think there are any other nicknames, but some slightly cringe way is to pronounce JMF as an abbreviation like “jé em ef” (yah em ef)
In Czech republic we have many for the Czech Crowns, but most notable one is “kačky” which translates to “ducks”. Kinda cute, as they tend to run away pretty often.
With Euros (spelled Eiro in Latvian) it’s less fun, just probably “Eiriks” as an informal way to say it, maybe “Einārs”, which is actually a guy’s name, but is used widely enough.
Hmm, there is τάλιρο for the 5€ banknote (I’m pretty sure it has transfered from the 5 drachma coin). There’s also δεκάρικο, εικοσάρικο, πενηντάρικο which refer to the 10€, 20€ and 50€ banknotes (not currency specific, they are just 10, 20, 50 with an ending), and χιλιάρικο, which refers to the amount of 1000€ (also not currency specific, it just means 1000 with the ending, although it must have meant the 1000 drachma banknote/coin when that existed). Similarly, δεκάλεπτο, εικοσάλεπτο, πενηντάλεπτο, δίευρο for the 0.10€, 0.20€, 0.50€ and 2€.
When talking about money in general, we can call it φράγκα (franks, after the old French currency, like in the word άφραγκος, which means penniless), but it does not refer to a currency.
Also, purple can be used for the 500€ banknote. While not a nickname per se, it is pretty widely understood in popular culture due to a character from a TV series in the 2000s, where a super-rich character who didn’t understand money just called them purple.
Rabbit(зайчик) and squirrel(белка), both are widely used in Belarus for Belarusian rouble. Rabbit because at some point we had banknotes with different local animals on them and one rouble note had a rabbit on it.
Squirrel is because “белка” has same root as “Беларусь”.
44 comments
There isn’t really any that caught on since we’ve got the Euro. Sometimes people say “Euri” as a mock latin plural. We used to call the guilder a “piek” and though people would occasionally use that for the Euro in the early days that seems to have died out.
For euros, in portugal, we usually say “paus” which means sticks. so
“Tens ai 2 paus que me emprestes?” -> “Do you have 2 euros to spare?”
Doesnt work for a singular euro, just plural.
Quid for the pound, the 5p used to be called a bob when it was still seen the same as a shilling but that’s now very rare, and the £5 and £10 note get an -er suffix on the value as a nickname, fiver and tenner
Balles/boules which means bullets/balls. “Je me suis pris une amende de quatre vingt balles” = I got an eighty bullets/balls fine. It’s not so much a nickname of the currency but a slang word for a unit of currency. Whether that currency is euros, franks, dollars, doesn’t matter.
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Here in greece many people still call euros “francs”. When someone is rich they say “he has a lot of francs”
We don’t have any nicknames for the currency itself «kroner» is just the name. We do however have nicknames for specific amounts, I.e. 4 løk(4 onions) = 4000, or Laken(sheet) also meaning 1000, I.e. 3 Laken = 3000
I think “Euronen” is the only thing I think of for Euros, comes from “Dublonen” (dubloons).
Other than that there’s lots of colloquialisms for money in general in German. Knete (dough), Kohle (coal), Mäuse (mice), Zaster (idek how to translate that one, I think “loot” would be the most accurate?)
Is it common in other languages to just say the number instead of the currency? Like in Spanish and English “two eighty five” is fine instead of “two euros eighty five cents” – but in Japanese we never say that it’s always “にひゃくはちじゅうご円” like “two hundred and eighty five yen” in full.
1000 units of a currency is called “jur” in Slovenian, but we don’t have any other nicknames.
For example “pet jurjev” meant 5000 SIT (20.86 EUR) in the past, but now it means 5000 EUR.
We have a few for different values – for small values we (very occasionally) use “kačka” (which is more like diminutive word for koruna, but also means “a duck”), for 100 we use “kilo” (kilo), for 1000 “tác” (tray) or “litr” (liter).
So if someone says “Dej mi 2 kila” (give me 2 kilos) or “Dej mi 5 litrů” (give me 5 liters), he really wants 200czk and 5000czk.
In Spain it is “pavos”. I heard that it goes back to when a turkey (pavo) used to cost like 5 pesetas, and that became a reference point for the currency.
For 1, 2 and 5 Cent coins we germans sometimes use “Braungeld” or “Braunes Geld” (Brown money).
Also, the 50€ note is called “Fuffi” (as a shorter version of “Fünfziger”).
Euro. Sometimes people say Euri as a mock plural.
5,2 and 1 cent coins are commonly called “ramini” as they have a copper color (copper is “rame” in italian, so it is like “small coppers”).
Then there’s the Roman dialect way of naming money. As I am from Rome, i’ll tell you because it is quite funny
5 euros is a “scudo”, because the ancient note of the then Papal States was called scudo (shield) as well.
100 euros (before, 100.000 lire) is a “piotta”, rarely a “fella”, from the value of an ancient Papal coin of the 19th century.
1000 euros (before, 1mln lire) is a “sacco” (sack), as it is a lot of money.
Multiples are used as well, so mezza piotta (half a piotta) means 50 euros, 2 sacchi means 2000 euros and so on. But for scudi they’re not used, idk why
Złocisz, Zeta and Cebulion for PLN
Zeta used to be popular in 1990s and 00’s mostly used by young people. Right now people use official name but sometimes, epsecially if person likes memes they use złocisz and cebulion.
In Finland, euro is called “ege”, and the dollar is “taala”. Small change is “hilu”.
Two euros and change = “kaks egee ja hilut”
Stutz for the Swiss Franc. Fünfliber for a 5 Franc coin. But Stutz is more general, you can say “Ich han kei Stutz” as I don’t have any money
“Gold coin” for the one and two dollars coin, i.e., a gold coin donation. . But that’s it as far as I’m aware
In the Geman speaking part: Stutz (Why? Nobody really knows). Also Stei (Stone) or Hebel (Lever). Money itself can be Chies (gravel) or Chöle (Coal).
A 5 franc coin is a Schnägg (Snail) or a Föifliber (five livres), a 100 Francs note would be a Lappen (Rag), 1000 Francs an Ameisi (Ant, used by those whihc remember the old bank notes) or a Tonne (ton), and 1 Million Francs would be a Chischte (Box).
Kall, which means man. It has quite specific uses though. It can be used for our all coins, except the 1 króna coin. Also, we would only use it for like “whole” hundreds or thousands. So we would say 100 kall or 2000 kall, but never 147 kall or 2350 kall.
No nicknames that I’m aware of, but some older people still call Hryvnias “rubles” as a habit from Soviet times
In Spain is pretty common “pavos”, I believe because of the movies, but where I live I have also heard “ñapos” which does have no actual meaning besides of money
I don’t think we have one for our own, but foreign currency, at least the less important ones, are collectively known as “gærninger” (crazies)
In Ireland, there’s a few. We use quid, we’d also use blip and yoyo(s). Then we do use tenner for ten euro like the English would. Squid instead of quid sometimes too.
In old west germany there were some nicknames for coins.
Like the Heiermann for the 5 Deutsche Mark coin. The most linguistically well-supported explanation suggests that it derives from the Hebrew letter **ה**, the fifth letter in the alphabet. Another theory links the term to the word Heuer / wages, five gold marks were a common signing bonus paid to sailors.
The 10 Pfennig coin was also called a Groschen, some call 10 Euro-cents a Groschen to this day. This term has been around forever for different kinds of coins.
Well, we have “Jyske Dollars” (Jutlandic dollars) in Denmark, often meaning money that the government doesn’t know is changing hands.
There are some nicknames for money in germany like Kohle (coal), Knete (plasticine) or Moos (moss). But for Euro, the only term that comes to mind is “Ocken”. And to be honest, I don’t know what it means.
In Estonian people say “Euri”, it’s a slang partitive case of euro. The actual partitive case of euro is “eurot”.
When you say “This costs 10 euros”, you use the partitive case in Estonian so it’s the most common name for euro in Estonian. “See maksab 10 euri”
Dollar has a slang name “taalad” in Estonian.
“This costs 10 dollars”: “See maksab 10 taala”
When the Deutsche mark used to exist it was called DEM, the currency code. The Finnish markka was called FIM.
“I have 10 DEM and 5 FIM”: “Mul on 10 demmi ja 5 fimmi”
When the Euro was introduced at a rate 1€ = 1.95583 DM, many people felt that price tags only switched out the currency sign and everything became much more expensive suddenly. They called the new currency Teuro which is a pun on teuer=expensive.
Some people still do it 23 years later.
Our one dollar coin is called a loonie (because it has a picture of a loon engraved on one side, which led to the two dollar coin being called a toonie.
A thousand dollars is called a grand, $2000 would be two grand, etc. That’s been around since the early 1900s.
Balles (bullets) was the nickname for French francs and it has been passed directly to euros. You’ll say “ça coûte 20 balles” (it costs 20 euros) or people will ask you “t’as pas 2 balles ?” (Do you have 2 euros) by which they ask you to give them the 2 euros.
To add on to Swedish currency nicknames we have for the 1000kr bill: “lax” (for the pink color of the old bill) and “lakan” (for the bigger size of the old bill).
I’m italian and in my city much people calls them “Razzi”. That’s the italian word for “rockets”.
I don’t know why and i think it’s a thing only in the city I live in.
In hungary there is no nick name for the currency but 2 Forints is somtimes called Bélás (Béla is a male name) and 1000 Forints is called lepedő(=bedsheets) like 4 lepedő = 4000 HUF
In Spain the most common nickname is “pavos” (turkeys)… I read an article that it has to do with the fact that there used to be a specific coin whose value was the same as that of a turkey, the nickname stuck for that coin, and it was carried over to the Euro. Idk if that’s true or not but the name is quite common.
There are none where you don’t sound like you live in the 70s. But here goes:
moneter · stakater · grunker · klejner · skillinger · slanter · gysser · knaster
“Spenn” or “Gryn”
First is the same word for kicking or tension, last one is the same word as grains.
Former is used all over the country, latter is more south East around the capital.
Edit: Just remembered: Løk (means onion) or Laken (means sheet, as in a bedsheet) is a 1000 kroner.
Danmark here:
Fisk (fish) – 50 dkr. use to be a fish on the old Bills
Hund (dog) – 100 dkr. short for hundrede(hundred)
Plov (plough) – 500 dkr. use to be a plough on the old Bill
Laks (salmon) – 1000 dkr. salmon colour Bill (out fased now. 500 is the highest amount)
We still sometimes use the old ROL values even when talking in new RON values.
So 100 RON could still be called a million because it is the equivalent of 100 000 000 ROL
JMF, aka “Jó magyar forint” for Forint (Good Hungarian Forint)
I don’t think there are any other nicknames, but some slightly cringe way is to pronounce JMF as an abbreviation like “jé em ef” (yah em ef)
In Czech republic we have many for the Czech Crowns, but most notable one is “kačky” which translates to “ducks”. Kinda cute, as they tend to run away pretty often.
With Latvian Lats it used to be “lasis” or “laši” in plural. It passes as a more informal way to just say “lats”, but also means “salmon”, which [the Lat coin had on its obverse.](https://tavexdavanas.lv/image/cache/catalog/Different/1-lats-lasis-rev-min-1000x1000w.jpg)
With Euros (spelled Eiro in Latvian) it’s less fun, just probably “Eiriks” as an informal way to say it, maybe “Einārs”, which is actually a guy’s name, but is used widely enough.
Hmm, there is τάλιρο for the 5€ banknote (I’m pretty sure it has transfered from the 5 drachma coin). There’s also δεκάρικο, εικοσάρικο, πενηντάρικο which refer to the 10€, 20€ and 50€ banknotes (not currency specific, they are just 10, 20, 50 with an ending), and χιλιάρικο, which refers to the amount of 1000€ (also not currency specific, it just means 1000 with the ending, although it must have meant the 1000 drachma banknote/coin when that existed). Similarly, δεκάλεπτο, εικοσάλεπτο, πενηντάλεπτο, δίευρο for the 0.10€, 0.20€, 0.50€ and 2€.
When talking about money in general, we can call it φράγκα (franks, after the old French currency, like in the word άφραγκος, which means penniless), but it does not refer to a currency.
Also, purple can be used for the 500€ banknote. While not a nickname per se, it is pretty widely understood in popular culture due to a character from a TV series in the 2000s, where a super-rich character who didn’t understand money just called them purple.
Rabbit(зайчик) and squirrel(белка), both are widely used in Belarus for Belarusian rouble. Rabbit because at some point we had banknotes with different local animals on them and one rouble note had a rabbit on it.
Squirrel is because “белка” has same root as “Беларусь”.