Nicknames for monetary denominations and their origins?

Factual Questions
1

Anybody have any clue how the nicknames arose, if there are any for the ones I missed, and why some stuck better than others?

$1 - buck, single, dollar
$5 - fin
$10 - sawbuck
$20 -
$50 -
$100 - c-note
$1000 - grand

I personally always liked “fin” and have tried to revive it, but no-one ever knows what I’m talking about.

2

here’s a link

3

Sorry, incomplete.

A c-note is because the Roman numeral for 100 is C

I’ll try to find more.

4

fin

dollar

5

Its very common to call a 20 a “twamp”. Here in SoCal at least.

6

pfbob, I’m your sister-in-fin. I was just looking through my wallet last night and saw that I had a five. I thought, “ooh, I have a fin!” And then I got confuzzled and couldn’t remember which was which - a fin vs a sawbuck.

Now that I’m clear, I’m going to work on using them more often.

7

Canadian money

$1 coin = Loony (picture of a loon on the front)
$2 coin = Two-ny (left as an exercise for the student)

8

A $20 is a double sawbuck. Scroll down this page to “a double”.
http://www.pseudodictionary.com/search.php?letter=a

And today $100s are called Franklins.

9

Shoot, hit Submit too soon.

And today $100s are called Franklins or Benjamins, as in the movie, All About the Benjamins.

10

Thanks everybody. Especially Casey, great link!!

11

Just where in SoCal do people call $20 bills “twamps”?

Am I that unhip?

12

Not that I ever actually have $100 bills but rather than Franklins I usually hear them called Banjamins. “K” is also slang for $1000 (from the metric kilo-), as is “G” (short for grand).

13

quarter - 1/4 dollar
dime - from decimus meaning tenth
nickel - It is - or was - partially composed of nickel
penny - from Old English word meaning “coin”

But why is a quarter “two bits”?

14

Here in the DC area, the $20 bill is also known as a “yuppie food coupon,” since its what you pull from the ATM in order to pay for dinner.

15

TGWATY
follow Casey’s ling above, there is an explanation of Two Bits. Pretty cool stuff.

16

I believe the Master has spoken on this, but in the old days (before paper money), people would have dollar coins. But few people would have smaller denomination coins. So you would just start cutting up the dollar coin into smaller pieces to make change.

And it was relatively simple to cut a coin into eight pieces (aka Pieces of Eight).

If you’ve got eight pieces (or bits), two of them would be $0.25

I see that Casey’s link does give a similar reason.

17

That’s what I heard in SoCal. I’m curious about “twamp,” as well, as I never heard it there.

Any such discussion of money nicknames would be incomplete without a few English slang words…now, most of them have been made obsolete by decimalization, but there are still a few good ones:

£1 - quid
£5 - fiver
£10 - tanner (or “tenner”)
£500 - monkey
£1,000 - grand (or “g,” as in “went down for 50 g’s”)

I understand them all except for “monkey,” which I find quite charming.

18

Northern California here.

Just wanted to say I’ve heard of “twamp” but I always thought it was spelled “twomp”.

I usually hear it when its used to buy drugs, or when my boyfriend is being stupid. When he was asked his age last year it was “twomp-deuce”

…and I thought a nickel was called a “bee” as in “give me five bees for a quarter”. Alright, I just wanted to put a Simpsons quote in.

19

“Monkey” for £500 seems to have originated around 1832, according to this site (more info on British slang terms for currency there).

One theory:

20

you forgot :

5p (I think, 1 shilling anyway) - bob

£100 - ton

£5 - sky diver/ Lady Godiva

£20 - score/ apple core/ Bobby Moore

£1 - squid/nicker

£ 25 - pony/macaroni

1p - penny/ Abergavanny

£10 - Ayrton Senna

50p - cows calf
(Quite afew of these are cockney rhyming slang)