I am an American currently living in Sweden and I have just used the expression, "He counts every single penny he has." I said this even though there are no pennies in Sweden and I was actually talking about Swedish money, the Kronor. My Swedish friend had a problem with the word "penny".

Just as Americans have a generalized term for the 100 parts a dollar can be broken down into (cents), a Swedish Kronor can be broken down into 100 parts called an "öre". After explaining that Americans have little "nicknames" names for all of the coins that can make up the dollar: penny, nickel, dime, quarter, etc... (are there more? What's a sawbuck?), my friend said that there aren't such nicknames for the different coin demoninations for (and of) the Kronor. There exists a 1-öre (not in circulation anymore since it is about the same value as a tenth of a penny), 50-öre, 1-kronor, 5-kronor, and 10-kronor coins. Not one of them has a nickname like the nickel, dime, etc...

My question is: Where did these names for American coins come from? I could easily be convinced that the nickel became the "nickel" since (at one time?) it was cast out of the metal nickel, but where do the others come from? Ok, ok a quarter is not so difficult to figure out either. So I guess that my question really is: Where do the words "penny" and "dime" come from?

-john