Piggy bank

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 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.

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 plug 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 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.

The oldest Western find of a money box dates from the 2nd century BC Greek colony Priene, Asia Minor, 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 ancient provincial sites, particularly in Roman Britain and along the Rhine.

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", 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 Empire.

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, 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.