A piggy bank (sometimes penny bank or money box) is a

coin A coin is a small object, usually round and flat, used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by ...

container normally used by

child A child () is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking ...

ren, featuring a slot at the top to insert coins or folded

bank notes A banknote or bank notealso called a bill (North American English) or simply a noteis a type of paper money that is made and distributed ("issued") by a bank of issue, payable to the bearer on demand. Banknotes were originally issued by commer ...

. The piggy bank is known to collectors as a "still bank" as opposed to the " mechanical banks" popular in the early 20th century. These items are also often used by companies for promotional purposes, and many financial service companies use piggy banks as logos for their savings products.

Uses

The general use of piggy banks is to store loose change in a quaint, decorative manner. They commonly serve as a pedagogical device to teach the rudiments of thrift and

saving Saving is income not spent, or deferred Consumption (economics), consumption. In economics, a broader definition is any income not used for immediate consumption. Saving also involves reducing expenditures, such as recurring Cost, costs. Methods ...

to children; money can be easily inserted, but is more difficult to remove. Because they can be fairly secure from casual theft, they are sometimes used by temples and churches to collect monetary donations, then remove the contents periodically.

Design

Modern piggy banks are usually made of painted

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcela ...

porcelain Porcelain (), also called china, is a ceramic material made by heating Industrial mineral, raw materials, generally including kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The greater strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to oth ...

. They are popularly in the shape of a rotund pig, but come in a range of shapes, sizes, and colors. In addition to a slot at the top, many piggy banks have a rubber

plug Plug, PLUG, plugs, or plugged may refer to: * Plug, an insertive closure or stopper (plug) ** Core plug, used to fill the casting holes on engines ** Butt plug, a sex toy that is inserted into the rectum ** Earplug for ear protection ** Plug (s ...

on the underside to allow removal of the coins; others are made of vinyl and have a removable nose for easy coin access. Some incorporate

electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductors * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic c ...

systems that calculate the amount of money deposited. To discourage spending, some banks do not have an opening for removal of coins, requiring the owner to smash the bank with a hammer or other means, to access the money within.

Origins

Hellenistic Money box in shape of a temple from Priene Antikensammlung Berlin

The oldest Western find of a money box dates from the 2nd century BC

Greek colony Greek colonisation refers to the expansion of Archaic Greeks, particularly during the 8th–6th centuries BC, across the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. The Archaic expansion differed from the Iron Age migrations of the Greek Dark Ages ...

Priene Priene (; ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek city of Ionia (and member of the Ionian League) located at the base of an escarpment of Mycale, about north of what was then the course of the Maeander River (now called the Büyük Menderes Rive ...

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

, and features the shape of a miniature

Greek temple Greek temples (, semantically distinct from Latin , " temple") were structures built to house deity statues within Greek sanctuaries in ancient Greek religion. The temple interiors did not serve as meeting places, since the sacrifices and ritu ...

with a slit in the

pediment Pediments are a form of gable in classical architecture, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the cornice (an elaborated lintel), or entablature if supported by columns.Summerson, 130 In an ...

. Money boxes of various forms were also excavated in

Pompeii Pompeii ( ; ) was a city in what is now the municipality of Pompei, near Naples, in the Campania region of Italy. Along with Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Villa Boscoreale, many surrounding villas, the city was buried under of volcanic ash and p ...

and

Herculaneum Herculaneum is an ancient Rome, ancient Roman town located in the modern-day ''comune'' of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under a massive pyroclastic flow in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Like the nearby city of ...

, and appear quite frequently in

late ancient Late antiquity marks the period that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the onset of the Early Middle Ages. Late antiquity as a period was popularized by Peter Brown (historian), Peter Brown in 1971, and this periodiza ...

provincial Provincial may refer to: Government & Administration * Provincial capitals, an administrative sub-national capital of a country * Provincial city (disambiguation) * Provincial minister (disambiguation) * Provincial Secretary, a position in Canad ...

sites, particularly in

Roman Britain Roman Britain was the territory that became the Roman province of ''Britannia'' after the Roman conquest of Britain, consisting of a large part of the island of Great Britain. The occupation lasted from AD 43 to AD 410. Julius Caes ...

and along the

Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...

.Hurschmann, Rolf (Hamburg): "Money boxes", Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider (ed.): '' New Pauly'', Brill, 2009

Pig shape

The earliest known pig-shaped money containers date to the 12th century on the island of

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

. The Javanese term ''cèlèngan'' (ꦕꦺꦭꦺꦁꦔꦤ꧀; literally "likeness of a wild boar",A ''cèlèng'' (ꦕꦺꦭꦺꦁ) is a wild boar, with the "an" affix used to denote a likeness but used to mean both "savings" and "piggy bank") is also in the modern

Indonesian language Indonesian (; ) is the official language, official and national language of Indonesia. It is a standard language, standardized variety (linguistics), variety of Malay language, Malay, an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language that has ...

. A large number of boar-shaped piggy banks were discovered at the large archaeological site surrounding

Trowulan Trowulan is an archaeological site in Trowulan (subdistrict), Trowulan Subdistrict, Mojokerto Regency, in the Indonesian province of East Java. It includes approximately 100 square kilometres and has been theorized to be the site of the eponymo ...

, a village in the Indonesian province of East Java and a possible site of the capital of the

Majapahit Empire Majapahit (; (eastern and central dialect) or (western dialect)), also known as Wilwatikta (; ), was a Javanese Hindu-Buddhist thalassocratic empire in Southeast Asia based on the island of Java (in modern-day Indonesia). At its greatest ...

. There are some

folk etymologies Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a mo ...

regarding the English language term "piggy bank," but in fact, there is no clear origin for the phrase. The earliest citation in the

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

is from 1913, and from 1902 for the variant "pig bank". The earliest known uses of "pig bank" are in newspaper articles from 1900. The popularity of Western piggy banks may have originated in Germany, where pigs were revered as symbols of good fortune. The oldest German piggy bank dates to the 13th century and was recovered during construction work in

Thuringia Thuringia (; officially the Free State of Thuringia, ) is one of Germany, Germany's 16 States of Germany, states. With 2.1 million people, it is 12th-largest by population, and with 16,171 square kilometers, it is 11th-largest in area. Er ...

Image gallery

File:Antike Sparbüchse, Archäologische Staatssammlung, München.jpg,

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

vase-shaped money box (2nd/3rd century AD). Ancient money boxes appear in the archaeological record in a wide variety of shapes. File:南宋灰陶扑满.jpg, Money box from the

Southern Song dynasty The Song dynasty ( ) was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Ten Kingdoms, endin ...

(1127–1279). File:Spaarpot, collectie Raakvlak, BR09-NDS-1-13-A-84.jpg, Broken money box in red earthenware (between 1250 and 1350), archaeological find from

Bruges Bruges ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders, in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is in the northwest of the country, and is the sixth most populous city in the country. The area of the whole city amoun ...

. File:Tudor money pot green, used in late medieval Britain.jpg, Tudor money box from the 16th century, England.

Notes

References

External links

*{{Commonscat-inline, Piggybanks
What's the origin of the piggy bank?
(from

The Straight Dope ''The Straight Dope'' was a question-and-answer newspaper column written under the pseudonym Cecil Adams. Contributions were made by multiple authors, and it was illustrated (also pseudonymously) by Slug Signorino. It was first published in 197 ...

) Money containers Banks Coins Figurines Traditional toys Pigs in art da:Sparebøsse#Sparegris