Euro

:For other uses, see {{PAGENAME}} (disambiguation) or EUR (disambiguation).

Slang words

Some countries have given local slang words for the euro.

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• In Finland, the most common slang word for euro is ege. This comes from huge, the slang word for the Finnish markka. The etymology and origin of huge are obscure. Cents are sometimes called sena. Euros are also known as eki, eero, or erkki. Eero and Erkki are also Finnish men's names. Another slang name is jörö, the Finnish name of the dwarf Grumpy, because jörö and the English language pronunciation of euro sound similar.
• In Ireland, the term quid has been transferred from its use as a slang term for the Irish pound to a slang term for the euro. The word fiver is used to refer to the five-euro note and tenner to refer to the ten-euro note. Another less common nickname is yo-yo.
• In Portugal, the 1 cent coin, because it is so small, was almost immediately nicknamed. The most common nicknames are: feijão (bean), botão (button), and tostão (penny). In Portugal beans are used to gamble when people do not want to play with money, as in the popular expression jogar a feijões ('playing with beans'), implying the 1 cent coin is worth as little as a bean. Some elderly people find hard to pronounce so they pronunce it as ouro (gold), while others think it is really named ouro, because of the similarity of both words and also due to some coins being gold-like. The 1, 2 and 5 cents are nicknamed moedas pretas (the black coins) because with time they become darker. The 100, 200 and, especially, the 500 euro notes are nicknamed nota grande (big banknote).
• In Austria and Germany, it has also been called Teuro, a play on the word "teuer", meaning 'expensive'. Many people felt that prices increased dramatically following the introduction of the euro because especially groceries and restaurants took the opportunity to camouflage price increases at the time of the euro changeover. An example: a pizza, in most Italian restaurants, previously cost around 13 German marks, now costs about 13 euros, which is nearly twice the old price. In youth culture also the plural-only word Euronen is sometimes used; many people see this as a parody of technology or science fiction vocabulary, after a Star Trek internet parody introduced also the race of the Euronen (Euronians).
• In Italy, the euro is sometimes jokingly called neuro, suggesting it has driven people (and the economy) mad. Also, in Italian the word euro is the same both in the singular and in the plural form, following the rule that shortened words have no different plural (foto, for instance, follows this rule). However, some people use informally use the plural form euri.
• In some regions of Spain, euro is sometimes called leru, (seen on a famous webtoon parody of The Lord of The Rings El Señor de los Lerus ), where the ring (leru) was a broken euro-coin, ebro, lauro, or pavo; the latter commonly used as a translation for the English slang buck in films and books. The 500 euro notes are sometimes jokingly nicknamed Bin Ladens (because "we all know it exists, but no-one has seen it lately"), and the contraction of céntimo de euro into centauro (centaur) is more rarely used for euro cents, it is commonly called centimo (cent) as a reminder of the first-half 20th century centimo de peseta.

The euro currency, like in Italy was also called neuro before 2002, because of the difficulty of the conversion into pesetas.

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• In the Netherlands, the nickname for the old Rijksdaalder (2½ guilders) 'knaak' is used by many, referring to the similarity in value. (There is some irony in an old joke 2 knaak 50 now being possible and thus no longer funny.) Some people use a different plural: euri, instead of euro's, the word pleuro is also being used instead of Euro (to make it sound more Dutch). The 5 cent coin is sometimes called stuiver, which was also the name of the 5 cent coin during the Guilder era. Similarly, 10 cents is sometimes called dubbeltje, which is derived from double stuiver. In prices, the word honderd (a hundred), is sometimes replaced by snip (common Snipe), which featured on the 100 guilder banknote used in the 1980s and 1990s.
• In Greece, Euros are humorously called 'Evra' in plural, adapted in the language's grammar, simulating a derivation from non-existant **to Euron. They are also ironically called 'Evropoula' (meaning 'small Euros'), largely derived from the funny speech of TV hostess Annita Pania.