Did you ever wonder why it the piggy bank? Squirrels store nuts – so why not the Squirrel bank? Camels store water – it should be a Camel bank! Pigs don’t save, story, or bury anything – then why the piggy bank??
In actual, it has nothing to do with pigs. In the Middle Ages, metal was expensive, and people did not use it much for ordinary household items. Instead, a common clay, known as pygg was used for crockery and other indoor purposes. Housewives would make pygg jars, and whenever they had a coin to spare, it would be dropped into one of these jars, which they called their pygg banks. As metal became cheaper, the clay pygg went out of ordinary usage. Centuries later, when pottery came back into daily usage, the potters made banks shaped like the pig when requested to make pygg banks. Of course they appealed much more to the kids and their mommies – and we became stuck with the “piggy banks”.
Posted in 
Tags: 
