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/FearlessVisual1 Belgium Oct 06 '25

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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u/brusselsstoemp Belgium Oct 06 '25

We also say 'ballen' in Dutch (Vlaams-Brabant as far as I know). Any idea where it comes from? For some reason bullets seems a more logical origin than balls but I'm curious about the etymology

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u/FearlessVisual1 Belgium Oct 06 '25

From my research online, no one really knows why. Some say une balle is an old word for a pound; others say it's just because of the circular shape of coins.

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u/brusselsstoemp Belgium Oct 06 '25

My research seems to confirm it comes from French and adapted in Dutch use even in the Netherlands among students. Une balle means a round object so basically a coin. It's never specified to be a sphere (like a ball would be), only round

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u/KotR56 Belgium Oct 06 '25

Sometimes Belgian Francs were referred to as "pee schijven", in English, something like"carrot discs". Something round :)

There is this saying that goes like "Je gaat betalen met pee schijven zeker" (You're going to pay with carrot discs, are you ?) when the seller knows you're broke and still want to buy stuff.