Pennies And Nickels

I demand everyone uses "One one hundredth of an United States of America Dollar" for those coins you commoners call "cents" or pennies".

One reason is that a "penny" IS a real face value for a coin.
And that IS NOT the face value of the US coin.
The term penny is just a holdover from the days when the US was a British colony.

The term "nickel" does not suffer from that.
It's just a reference to one of the coining metals used in its production.
Strictly speaking of course it's a "5 cent" coin.
But to the best of my knowledge there is no other world coin known as a nickel.

Subject comes a lot on coin forums. Just some people get all irritated about one thing or another. Same people don't complain about Saw Buck, Fin for five, 2 bits for quarter, bill for paper currency, etc. Note it does not say BILL on a dollar bill. Does not say 2 bits on a Quarter. And why does it not say 10 Cents on a Dime? Shouldn't it say 10 CENTS or 10 PENNIES? Penny for Cents is just a massively used term all over the USA. Not long ago there was a series of songs listed using the term PENNIES, not CENTS. Just try singing CENTS FROM HEAVEN. It just makes good CENTS to call a PENNY a PENNY.

Because it is accurate, it is not a penny, it is a cent. Most people here would call themselves numismatists, and as a field of study, accuracy is essential, accuracy in attribution, accuracy in grading, accuracy in assigning the correct VAM, die pair, mint error.

Accuracy is essential to value (not just monetary). In 1866 when the five cent piece first became made of nickel, there was already a five cent piece or " Half Disme" and it was still minted through 1873, so the designation of a " nickel" was an accurate way of distinquishing between the two and it stuck as an acceptable form, in numismatics, of referring to a five cent piece.

Bottom line is many..many people around here consider themselves numismatists, not just "collectors"
You can't expect to walk in to a group of astronomers and start talking about the planet Pluto, without expecting to be corrected that, Pluto is not a planet.

Kanga, to make a bit of a point there is a small - ish country a bit north of the 49th parallel, our 5 cent coin is called the Nickel and was made of pure nickel upto 1981. up here in the great white north we are not so picky about the terminology we call our cents pennies, and our 5 cents nickels.

The US Mint are gov't manufacturers, not numismatists. That is like saying that "Boeing says they are building a satellite to go to the planet Pluto", so despite what NASA and IAU says, Pluto must be a planet.

Tell me the ANA calls it a penny and then I will be on board.

It's not the US Mint that decided to call them pennies. Their official name has been a one-cent piece since the start of the US Mint.

It's because of the non-collecting citizens of the United States of America. Americans kept calling a copper coin with a face value of "1" a penny even after the British colonization, and it got to a point where Americans forgot their official name and the nickname stuck.

Because most Americans can't understand what a "cent" or a "one cent piece" is, the US Mint has to call it by its nickname. Poor US Mint.

Because calling them cents is the official, shorter way of reffering to the one-cent piece than saying pennies.

Just like math. You can call rhombuses diamonds when you are outside math class, just talking causually. But, when you are sitting in front of a math professor in a geometry class, you know that you will get looks from your colleagues and teacher for calling a rhombus a diamond, when you know the official mathematic term & the official term is used by all the others.

When you are in a specialized group, it's necessary to use the "official" term for an object, even though there is a more casual way of saying it. Also a good way to show that you are educated & experienced about the topic.