A piggy bank (sometimes penny bank or money box) is a coin container normally used by , featuring a slot at the top to insert coins or folded Banknote. The piggy bank is known to collectors as a "still bank" as opposed to the "" 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
Frugality and
saving 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 or
porcelain.
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
bung 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
Electronics 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.
[Sandy Donovan, Budgeting, p. 22, Lerner Publications, 2005 .]
Origins
The oldest Western find of a money box dates from the 2nd century BC
Greek colony Priene,
Anatolia, and features the shape of a miniature
Greek temple with a slit in the
pediment. Money boxes of various forms were also excavated in
Pompeii and
Herculaneum, and appear quite frequently in
Late Antiquity Roman province sites, particularly in
Roman Britain and along the
Rhine.
[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. 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.
A large number of boar-shaped piggy banks were discovered at the large archaeological site surrounding Trowulan, a village in the Indonesian province of East Java and a possible site of the capital of the Majapahit.[Supratikno Rahardjo. "Tradisi Menabung dalam Masyarakat Majapahit: Telaah Pendahuluan terhadap Celengan di Trowulan". In Monumen: Karya Persembahan Untuk Prof. Dr. R. Soekmono. Depok: Fakultas Sastra Universitas Indonesia, 1990. pp. 203-217.]
There are some folk etymologies 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 is from 1913,[Sioux City Journal, July 20, 1900][Kalamazoo Gazette, September 27, 1900] The popularity of Western piggy banks may have originated in Germany, where pigs were revered as symbols of good fortune.[" Twisted tale: The great piggy bank mystery". BBC Storyworks] The oldest German piggy bank dates to the 13th century and was recovered during construction work in Thuringia.
See also
Image gallery
File:Antike Sparbüchse, Archäologische Staatssammlung, München.jpg|Ancient Rome vase-shaped money box (2nd/3rd century AD). Ancient money boxes appear in the archaeological record in a wide variety of shapes.
Notes
External links
