scotlib

Hi,

I brought in samples of Euro and Pound coins to show to a 3rd grade class from my recent trip. While sorting them, I started to wonder ...

The US has the penny (1 cent), nickel (5 cents), dime (10 cents), etc., but I do not remember ever hearing a name for a 5 cent Euro coin or a 10 pence Pound coin. Do they have names?

Thanks much!

quokka

A 5 Euro cent coin is a 5 cent coin. We had some names for certain old DM coins but for the Euro coins, so far nothing witty has evolved, at least not in Germany. Let's see, maybe in a couple of years.

jamikins

A pound is sometimes referred to as a 'quid' kind of like N.Americans say 'buck' for a dollar. But I dont think British coins have names like you are referring to. I'll check with some people here at work..

jamikins

ok, just checked with a British co-worker and no, they dont have names, just their denominations. (and yes, he did give me a strange look for asking hahaha)

adrienne

In France the coins are quite often referred to as "centimes" which is name used for the coin when Francs were in circulation. Otherwise they're called cents. There's not much you can buy for under a Euro so I didn't often hear either term.

adrienne

jamikins - no one uses the term "shilling" any more?

bilboburgler

No sterling coinage has not got back all the old names when it was shillings and pence, though probably some mockney will tell me I'm wrong and a 10p is a "petal" or something obscure. The Quid was a pound of old money so it carried over.

For some reason our mint insistis on stamping loads of different versions of the same coin and so we have a great many fakes doing the rounds. Careful googling should give your class access to this problem

jamikins

Nope, shilling is the old money before decimalization. No one in my immediate surroundings can even tell me what its worth in todays terms.

My favorite old term is thrumpneybit (sp??)

flanneruk

What's a "10 pence Pound coin"?. Is this somehow connected with a 10 cent dollar coin?

The English for a penny coin is...a penny. Or sometimes 'One p'. The other values are simply called 'a two pence coin" or "a two p".

We've not had alternative names for coins since decimalisation.

Pre-1971, almost all coins, apart from the penny, had alternative names, though some of these coins haven't been in circulation for several centuries:

0.25 d (£0.002) farthing
0.5 d (£0.004) ha'penny
3d (£0.0125) threepenny bit
4d (£0.0167) groat
6d (0.025) tanner
1/- (£0.05) shilling or bob
2/- (£0.1) florin
2/6d (£0.125) half a crown
5/- (£0.25) crown
£1 Sovereign. I THINK "quid" was used only to describe the note. The coin was always called a sovereign or 'sov'
21/- (£1.05) Guinea

jamikins

ok, we have some agreement: 20 shillings to an old pound, 12 pennies to a shilling.

Glad I didnt have to make change before decimalization!

jamikins

flanneruk...you beat me to it

PatrickLondon

In the UK, the link with the old coins (and therefore their nicknames) was lost at decimalisation, apart from any words for the pound itself. I'm not aware of any new ones being invented (probably since, with inflation, none of them is a significant unit of value any more, just part of the general transitory shrapnel in one's pocket).

The fact that there were new coins of the same value as old ones made not a lot of difference, either, since the new coins were so very different in feel from the old ones. And the idea of new pennies and old pennies caused even more confusion, with a lot of people somehow settling on the idea that "pence" was the new singular noun ("one pence", forsooth), at least for a time.

Some alternatives to add to flanner's list: "nicker" for a pound (London only, I think), and a "joey" for a <i>really</i> old silver threepenny bit (withdrawn sometime in the 1930s). Occasionally people would call half a crown "half a dollar" (from the days when £1=$4).

scotlib

Wow, many thanks for the quick replies. I thought it an interesting topic when I started to wonder about it. Thank you for confirming that there is not really names for the individual coins, at this time, anyway.

bilboburgler, thanks for the note. I did see some differences, I thought it was design changes for new coins only, when looking for pictures to show them, but had not considered some could be fakes.

Part of elementary education is learning how much each of our coins are worth (penny = 1 cent, nickel = 5 cents, etc.). It had never occurred to me that this is sort of like an extra step, and not just calling the coins by the denomination alone.

Thanks again for the replies!

flanneruk

It's also worth adding that Britain had (and, just about, still has) virtual coins (and notes).

Five shillings (25p) was widely known as 'a dollar' (as in "put a dollar each way on Counterfeiter in the 3.30" or "I put a dollarsworth of petrol in"), even a century or two after the crown coin disappeared. Guineas are still used in some auctions and the like, though there's no equivalent note or coin.

There's supposed to an elaborate use of bizarre words for multiples of pounds, like monkey for £500 and pony for £25. We need our resident expert on fake Cockneyisms to confirm, though, whether this is true, or invented by a couple of scriptwriters (probably for Minder or The Bill) on a wet Friday afternoon in 1975

quokka

Another thought... If you want to tell the kids more about the Euro coins and what's on the backsides, which countries they are from, what the pictures are etc., have a look at the website of the European Central Bank. There all national varieties of Euro coins and also the special editions are explained, so check out which ones you have... It is fascinating to discover the stories behind them.
http://www.ecb.eu/euro/coins/html/index.en.html

RM67

UK £5 and £10 notes also get abbreviated to 'a fiver', and 'a tenner'.

Modern UK coins don't have nicknames that I can think of, but sometimes a pocketful of change collectively gets referred to as 'shrapnel'.

stfc

24carat.co.uk/commoncoinnames.html
gives a guide to 'Numismatic Etymology for the Bewildered'.

Terms like 'monkey' and 'pony' are used by oiks of doubtful origin who spend too long watching gees-gees racing. I believe horses are still sold in guineas.

There is little chance of euro notes and coins being given slang names as they are used all over Europe, but with present exchange rates they might as well end up as tanners, florins, crowns, etc.

There was nothing difficult about the old 240d=£1 system if you were brought up with it. Like learning Mandarin.

bilboburgler

The good thing about the old system was you could split coins into smaller and smaller proportions. Just try half of a half of 10p. But half of a half of a shilling was easy. Like many of these things they were designed for people not computers.

see also feet and inches
loss of empire
etc
etc

nona1

We do use a few slang names - we don't walk around saying 'that will be one pence please'.
To start with we say 'pee' instead of pence. 10pee. 25pee. 49pee. We have a group of shops called the 99pee shop.Then

1p = penny
2p = tuppence (ok, this is falling out of use a bit but it's still familiar to everyone. Perhaps it'll take another generation to die out completely).
£5 - fiver
£10 - tenner

I did have someone offer me a pony for an old motorbike once. I had to say no as I had no idea how much that means...a few people use the pony/monkey slang but it's more wide-boy eastend slang than general UK slang.

crdtny

Five pounds was always know as "LADY GODIVA" Where I came fron.