21 October 2008

The international game of Online Bingo

There’s a brand new online bingo site just launched last week in Finland, and the locals are going crazy for it and just can’t get enough!

I’m not exactly a linguistic expert, let alone in English, but I wonder how you say ‘Bingo’ in Finnish? It’s probably one of those words that’s impossible to translate. And where did the word Bingo come from anyway?

Some say that the term Bingo is related to the game of Keno, dating back to as early as 1814 in USA, which comes from the Latin word ‘quini’ - meaning five (winning numbers) as in a Lotto game.

Others say that Bingo started off as a Lotto-like game that can be traced back to the mid-16th century in Italy, and slowly spread across Europe arriving in the USA in 1929 where it was promptly called Beano - due to the fact that it was played with beans instead of bingo balls!

I think I’d enjoy a game of Beano, it does have a certain ring to it, but if you compare the phrase Online Beano to Online Bingo, for me the latter comes out tops.

Written by Bingo Lady

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