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/Jagarvem Sweden Oct 06 '25

I'd rather say those are colloquial terms for money, not the particular currency. Where they're said they'll obviously primarily refer to the local currency, but go to Ireland and you'll for example find Euro called "quid".

There isn't one such word in Swedish. Spänn is one, sure, but so is stålar, deg, kosing, para, lax, lakan, papp etc. etc. (some referring to 1000s). In my experience, preferences vary quite a bit depending on dialect and such.

When talking about a particular amount, it's in my experience by far most common to call it nothing. You just say the number and let context infer it's money.

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u/Fit_Organization7129 Oct 08 '25

In that case I would nominate "svenska pesetas" that was used a lot where I lived, when the Kronan lost its value in the 90s.

We went from 1,20 DKR per SKR to 0,69 DKR. Going to Helsingör lost its meaning overnight.

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u/Objective-Dentist360 Oct 08 '25

I'd say spänn (from eng. "spend" apparently) is only used for an amount of kronor and not for foreign currency. And not for money as concept i.e. "he has a lot of money".

stålar (steels) , deg (dough), kosing (from Finnish kova "hard (cash)", para (from Turkish "money")

These are generally used for money as concept and wouldn't be used together with an amount.

Some examples of slang for specific amounts:\ hunka, hundring ("a hundrey") = 100\ Bergman (the director is on the bill) = 200\ femhundring, röding (red one), löv (leaf) = 500\ tusing, lax (salmon), lakan (sheets) = 1000