Bin Ladens, Tubmans, and Benjamins: What we talk about when we talk about cash
The many nicknames for money
On May 4, the European Central Bank announced they would stop producing and issuing the €500 banknote by the end of 2018 (although it will remain legal tender). The ECB’s press release cited “concerns that this bank note could facilitate illicit activities.’”
This is not a new concern: the BBC reported in 2010 that the €500 banknote would no longer be sold in the UK, saying that the notes were so tied to crime, money laundering and terrorism as to be known as ‘Bin Ladens’ in some countries.
Nicknames for money based on proper names aren’t unusual, although they’re usually taken from the names of the people featured on the bills. (If, like most people, you’ve never seen a €500 banknote: Bin Laden’s face is not on it.)
US Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew recently announced that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. A few days later, President Obama joked at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that he’d re-use his jokes from the event for paid speeches to earn some “serious Tubmans.”
Historically, it’s more often the last names of the people featured that become nicknames, though there are bills that we’re on a first-name basis with: the Swedish 20-kronor note has been called a ‘Selma’ (after Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature); the US $100 bill is more often a ‘Benjamin’ (or a ‘Big Ben’), than a ‘Franklin’; and the US $1000 bill (discontinued in 1969) was the ‘Grover’ or ‘G-note’ (after President Grover Cleveland, not the Muppet). The Australian $10 note is sometimes called a ‘Banjo’ (the nickname of Andrew Paterson, featured on the bill, who wrote “Waltzing Matilda”).
Many of the slang terms for bills are straightforward: we have ‘fivers’ and ‘tenners’, ‘two-0s’ (twenties) and ‘huns’ (hundreds). Some are taken from other languages: the C-note (sometimes spelled ‘ceno’) and V-spot are from the Roman numerals for 100 and 5, and so, too, is ‘sawbuck’ (a ten-dollar bill), in a roundabout way. A sawbuck is a sawhorse, especially one with crossed legs at each end, and those crossed legs make an X, the Roman numeral for 10. A double-sawbuck is, of course, a twenty-dollar bill. The word ‘finif’ for a five-dollar bill is from the Yiddish ‘finif’, ‘five’.
Other English-speaking countries indulge in rhyming slang for their notes: the UK has ‘Lady Godiva’ (for ‘fiver’), ‘cockle’ (‘Cock and Hen’/ten) and ‘bag’ ($1000, from ‘bag of sand’/grand). Australia has ‘Oxford’ for a one-dollar note (‘Oxford Scholar’/dollar). Australia also has ‘Pav’ for the ten-dollar note (from ‘Pavarotti’/tenor/tenner).
The dollar bill, being the most common, may have the greatest number and variety of slang terms: it can be an ‘ace’ or ‘ace note’ (from the playing card), a ‘berry’, a ‘bill’, a ‘bone’, a ‘boon’, a ‘buck’, a ‘case note’ (from being the last one in the case, or wallet), a ‘fish’, a ‘frog’ (or ‘frogskin’; the $50 bill is also a frog), a ‘greenback’, a ‘rock’ (‘rock’ is also used to mean a million dollars, although not the mythical million-dollar bill), a ‘skin’, a ‘simoleon’, a ‘smack’ (or ‘smacker’ or ‘smackeroo’), and a ‘square’, among others.
The two-dollar bill is sometimes considered bad luck, and so is known as the ‘jinx note’. It also has a host of more offensive names, including ‘she-bill’, ‘squaw note’ (in Canada) and ‘whore note’, from the idea that two dollars was a typical sum charged by a prostitute.
More colorful slang terms for money include the ‘California C-note’ ($10, rather than $100: ‘California’ is used in a lot of joking negative compounds, e.g. ‘California blanket’, a newspaper used as bedding; ‘California collar’, a hangman’s noose). The word ‘California’ by itself is obsolete slang for money in general. Hundred-dollar bills can be called ‘candy wrappers’ (from their use in purchasing and consuming cocaine) and thousand-dollar bills are ‘Nevada lettuce’. Another place-based colorful money term is the ‘Kansas City roll’: a large number of dollar bills stacked with a twenty on the inside and a hundred dollar bill on the outside, to seem like a fatter wad.
One of the most fanciful currency terms may have a shot at becoming official: a Change.org petition is seeking to have the Australian currency renamed from ‘dollars’ to ‘dollarydoos’, after a reference from a 1995 ‘Simpsons’ episode (“Bart vs Australia”). The petition has nearly 70,000 signers.
