The S'vivon Story

Many ancient cultures used spinning tops as toys or as good-luck charms. In the ruins of ancient Babylon and the tombs of the Pharaohs, as well as in Greece and Rome, were found toys or dice similar to today's s'vivon (in Yiddish = "dreidle").
The Hebrew letters: 'nun' = N,
'gimmel' = G
'hay' = H
'shin' = Sh
are Hebrew applications for German letters marked on four-sided tops.
In German they meant:
N - Nichts = nothing, no gain and no loss;
G - Ganz = all, the whole pot;
H - Halb = half;
S - Steel = put down, add to the pot;

This was in effect a game of chance played for money, according to the spinning of a four-sided top.

Jews transliterated the German letters to Hebrew, as an abbreviation:
"Nes Gadol Hayah Sham" = A great miracle happened THERE

'There' was a reference to the Land of Israel, where the miraculous events of the original Chanukah took place. As Jews in recent generations returned to the Land of Israel, the letter 'shin' was changed to 'peh' to mean:
"Nes Gadol Hayah Po" = A great miracle happened HERE