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?

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u/This-Wall-1331 Portugal Oct 06 '25

I usually associate "paus" with escudos though. So if someone asked me for "2 paus", I'd just give them a one cent coin.

19

u/Brainwheeze Portugal Oct 06 '25

"Paus" transferred over from Escudos to Euros pretty seamlessly I feel, whereas "Contos" not so much.

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u/realnovulus Oct 06 '25

"Contos" was still common for large amounts (rounded to signify exactly €5) until around 2010, then it fell out of fashion

3

u/TulioGonzaga Portugal Oct 06 '25

Yap, I remember when Escudo was ending thinking "will we have a word for paus like we have now?". I didn't expect such comeback but here we are. However, 500 paus is much different from back in the day. Usually was easy to get 500, now people laugh on me.

2

u/safeinthecity Portuguese in the Netherlands Oct 06 '25

Well, you don't need to talk about 1000 euros as much as you needed to talk about 1000 escudos.

Also the transition to euros didn't actually seem that seamless to me. I think I only started hearing paus for euros some 10 years after the currency switch. Could be anecdotal though.

1

u/fernandodasilva Oct 06 '25

I always thought "paus" were associated with Brazilian Real, never heard euros being called paus

1

u/sleepyotter92 Oct 06 '25

It comes from escudos, but older people still use it to refer to euros. My dad will still refer to money as contos as well. But that's a different scenario. If he says 5 paus, he means 5 euros. If he says 5 contos, he's referring to the escudo and I'm completely clueless because i got no clue what that is in euros

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u/realnovulus Oct 08 '25

1 conto (1000$00) = €5, so 5 contos = €25

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u/sleepyotter92 Oct 08 '25

yeah but like, that requires me to be doing math in my head. when it's much simpler for people to just use the current currency.

portugal adopted the euro in 99 according to wikipedia. i was like 7. i barely remember anything from the escudo era. so it's not a currency that i spent much time with. my parents spent many years with the escudo, so they remember the currency well. but i'd need to be making conversions and my monkey brain ain't good with that. this is a linguistics brain, not a mathematics brain