What is the name of the spinning top used in Hanukkah games?

What is the name of the spinning top used in Hanukkah games? It is called a dreidel. A dreidel is a four-sided spinning top traditionally used to play a Hanukkah game.

Each side carries a Hebrew letter: nun, gimel, he, or shin. In the traditional game, the letters determine whether a player puts pieces into the pot, takes the whole pot, takes half, or does nothing. Chocolate gelt, coins, raisins, and other small tokens may be used as playing pieces.

The Yiddish word dreydl comes from a verb meaning “to turn” or “to spin.” In Hebrew, the toy is called a sevivon. The letters are popularly interpreted as an abbreviation for “A great miracle happened there,” referring to the Hanukkah story; Israeli dreidels commonly use pe instead of shin, changing “there” to “here.”

Spinning a dreidel is a custom rather than one of Hanukkah’s formal commandments. The familiar story that Jews used spinning tops to disguise Torah study is a later tradition, not the holiday’s central historical account.