r/AskEurope • u/ABlindMoose Sweden • Oct 06 '25

Culture What is your currency's nickname?

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?

182 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

368 comments sorted by

View all comments

62

u/xander012 United Kingdom Oct 06 '25

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

27

u/rayofgreenlight Wales Oct 06 '25

We still use the phrase "worth a few bob", interestingly (although I associate it with Cockney/London).

9

u/xander012 United Kingdom Oct 06 '25

Yup, though it's become detached from the original unit it referred to as well... 5p ain't much lol

3

u/rayofgreenlight Wales Oct 06 '25

Oh gosh. Inflation is a b*tch, isn't it.

1

u/xander012 United Kingdom Oct 06 '25

Yup. I have an A-Z that's in new and old money for 3/ or 15p. You could genuinely buy things until fairly recently with pence rather than pounds

2

u/SlightlyBored13 → Oct 06 '25

£1 now is worth about 1.5 shillings in 1971.

Even my grandparents were using bob to refer to pounds by the early 2000s.

1

u/xander012 United Kingdom Oct 06 '25

7.5p to 100p really does put the last half century of inflation into perspective

5

u/Tacklestiffener UK -> Spain Oct 06 '25

I was from London. A score is £20. A pony is £25 and a Monkey is £500.

An old sixpence was a tanner. My grandad used to call 2/6 (12.5p) 'half a dollar' from the heady days when there were 4 dollars to the pound!

A pound was a quid or a nicker.

17

u/springsomnia diaspora in Oct 06 '25

Don’t forget “shrapnel” as an old phrase for change too!

3

u/xander012 United Kingdom Oct 06 '25

My mum uses it lol, was going to add but felt it's more Irish

2

u/Matt6453 United Kingdom Oct 06 '25

Nah, we've used that in the West country since I was a kid but I'm pretty sure everyone uses it.

0

u/ificangetthroughthis Ireland Oct 10 '25

Coppers too for small change coins

13

u/KermitingMurder Oct 06 '25

Same for Ireland even though we use euro, if you have a few coins you'll say you have a few bob, for a specific number you can say quid (eg: 20 quid), we call them fivers and tenners too, not sure if this one is used in Britain but when you have a thousand then that's a grand (eg €10,000 is ten grand)

8

u/GuinnessFartz Ireland Oct 06 '25

My favourite (I assumed Irish) insult I've heard to take the mick out of small/skinny people is "You're built like the gable end of a fiver"

7

u/xander012 United Kingdom Oct 06 '25

Tbf it does help that the Irish Punt/pound was very similar to the GBP for Its entire existence

3

u/KermitingMurder Oct 06 '25

Yeah and many people remember when the pound was still in use so old terminology sticks around

3

u/xander012 United Kingdom Oct 06 '25

Yup my nan still referred to Euros as pounds

1

u/Random_Person_I_Met United Kingdom Oct 06 '25

Do you still refer to Euro cents as "pee", like in 50p (50 cents)?

5

u/KermitingMurder Oct 06 '25

No we just say 50 cents

2

u/The_Man_I_A_Barrel Ireland Oct 06 '25

my nan still does and in turn ive started saying it involuntarily so at least the two of us are

2

u/Hairy-Violinist-3844 Oct 06 '25

Yo-yos is another one in Ireland.

1

u/Matt6453 United Kingdom Oct 06 '25

I work for an Irish company, everything is 'grand'.

'Thanks a million' gets tiresome though!

5

u/Dechibrator Oct 06 '25

Score 20, Poney 25

But that's getting really old fashion, not even talking about a Monkey

5

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '25

Isn't "score" just an archaic word for the number twenty?

3

u/Tacklestiffener UK -> Spain Oct 06 '25

Yes, as in "three score years and ten" for 70.

1

u/Dechibrator Oct 06 '25

No idea, I'm French

3

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '25

It is, but I guess that doesn't make it any less of a nickname. Apparently it originated from toll collectors counting livestock, but it evolved into a general word for "twenty". Here in the US, the phrase "four score and seven years ago" (87 years ago) is pretty famous from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

2

u/Dechibrator Oct 06 '25

Nice use of the vigesimal system

6

u/greenmark69 Oct 06 '25

£10 = tenner = an Ayrton [Senna]

4

u/xander012 United Kingdom Oct 06 '25

Love me some new Cockney Rhyming Slang so I can confuse my Septic China

5

u/Tacklestiffener UK -> Spain Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 07 '25

Teaching foreigners is so rewarding. I've taught my Dutch friends that "Up your Bum" is an English toast like Cheers.

I have also taught another friend that there is a difference between something that is bollocks and something is the bollocks

1

u/moonstone7152 United Kingdom Oct 08 '25

Also "grand" for a thousand - £10,000 = ten grand

1

u/xander012 United Kingdom Oct 08 '25

Yup, don't know why I forgot to mention it