How did piggy banks get their unusual name?
Most of us have grown up saving coins in cute-looking piggy banks. But have you ever wondered thought where they come from or who even thought of making a mini coin bank in the shape of small (often pink) pig? Today, let us find out more about the accidental invention of piggy banks, a common companion of our childhood days.
What does pig have to do with bank?
Well, the answer is nothing. Pigs absolutely have nothing to do with banks. In fact, that’s not how the word “piggy” became associated with banks. Okay, so, what’s the real story? For that, let us quickly turn our clocks back by almost 600 years (15th century to be precise), long before real-world banks existed. So, if banks weren’t there, where did people keep their money? Mostly kitchen jars and rarely under the mattress.
In the medieval age, metal was costly, which is why kitchenware and household utensils were made of a relatively cheaper orange-coloured clay called ‘pygg’. And whenever people needed to save money (which was mostly coins in those days), they simply dropped one or two into these jars, known as ‘pygg pot’.
Piggy bank and the nuance of English language
Back then, “y” used to be pronounced as ‘u’ which is why ‘pygg’ came to be pronounced as ‘pug’. But with the advancement of the language over the next few centuries, ‘y’ was changed to sound like a strong ‘i’, as a result, ‘pygg’ started sounding like ‘pig’.
Here’s a coincidence. Pig was ‘pigge’ in Middle English, because this farm animal used to roll around in ‘pygg’ dirt. Over the next few centuries, the English language further evolved and ‘pygg’ and ‘pig’ started being pronounced exactly the same. And it wasn’t before long that people started to merge both the spellings into one. Maybe that’s why, in the 19th century when potters received orders to make pygg banks, they thought that the vessel needs to resemble the animal. Looks like, it was nothing more than an accidental visual pun, that has ever since appealed to kids and adults alike. Thus, pig banks or piggy banks were born!
The first known piggy bank
Interestingly, Europe wasn’t the only continent where piggy banks were popular. In fact, the first known piggy bank is known to be made in Java, the island country of Asia, in the 14th century. It was a terracotta based mini bank in the shape of a pig with a whole at the top to deposit coins. The Japanese people too made similar ones.
Pigs in earlier times were considered to be the symbol of prosperity, wealth and luck. This too could have been another reason why pygg banks soon came to be known as piggy banks.
Why did the piggy bank needed to be broken?
The answer to this is really simple and almost right there. Though early piggy bank models had a slit at the top to deposit coins, they had no hole in the bottom for taking out coins whenever needed. So, it was convenient to just break them open. So, once broken, the piggy bank couldn’t be reused and one had to find some other way to store the currencies or simply find another piggy bank. Maybe that’s why people assume that the expression “breaking the bank” originates from piggy bank. After all, the idiom refers to exhausting one’s financial resources.
Today, piggy banks are made out of ceramic or porcelain. In countries like Netherlands and Germany, gifting piggy banks is considered to be lucky for both the giver and the receiver.