I was thinking about this awhile.... 1. What's the origin of the word "Penny" or "cent"? 2. Why do we call them nickels if they're mostly made out of copper? 3. Origin of "dime"? 4. Origin of "dollar"?
The cent refers to Latin "centum" = 100, or rather "centesimus" = (one) hundredth. Don't know about the origin of "penny" but the word came up in the 7th or 8th century, I think. It was used for the (originally Roman) coin called denarius. Because they don't look like copper? ;-) Maybe there was more nickel (or nickel only?) in those coins in earlier years. Latin "decem" = ten, "decimus" = (one) tenth Refers to a place called Joachimsthal (today Jachymov, Czech Republic). The big silver coins from Joachimsthal became quite popular and widespread in Europe; that type of coin was called "Joachimsthaler", then simply "Thaler". Or "dollar" in English ... Christian
Well the nickel term was first used in this country to describe the early Indian cents. When I have customers ask for a nickel, I ask them whether they want the 1 cent nickel, 3 cent nickel, or 5 cent nickel.
Hmm, lets see... 1. The penny term came from the Engligh penny, for which the term's etemology is somewhat obscure. Cent came from percent, and the fact that the penny was 1/100th of a dollar, or a "percent". 2. Nickels were originaly made of mostly of the copper/nickel sandwich, but the nickel was on the outside and it looked like nickel. It was originally termed the nickel to distinguish it from the then circulating silver half dime. 3. The dime originated from an Old English word "dek" meaning ten. It evolved from that to dime over the centuries. 4. The word dollar was what english speaking peoples called the Spanish peso, or pieces of eight. Hope this helped, it was fun looking it up. Cris
A bit of confusion here - at the time that pieces of 8 circulated - the term peso was used to stipulate the given weight 96 grains in gold or the value of this weight in gold. It was used when silver was mentioned as well - but only when trying to determine what a given amount of silver equaled in pesos.
You got some quick replies, none of which was totally wrong. Allow me to suggest that your questions can be answered pretty quickly if you build your numismatic library. It is easy to spend your money on coins coins coins coins wonderful coins, but without KNOWLEDGE, the coins are about as interesting as lock washers. If you live in or near a large city, or if you visit one, shopping the used bookstores can enhance your collecting experience. Detroit is GREAT for used numismatic references; Columbus was mediocre; Albuquerque was terrible. So, shopping can be a challenge, sometimes. You can find books for sale in the coin newspapers and at coin shows, of course. The two that any collector of American coins needs are THE US MINT AND COINAGE by Donald Taxay and THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF US AND COLONIAL COINS by Walter Breen. 1. Penny probably comes from a Germanic word that also gave us the word "pawn." The coin itself originated in western Europe during the dark ages. I suggest also a link to the word "pensa" meaning "weight." (The word "penny" is _NOT_ related to the word "denarius." However, because the coins were the same size or served the same purpose, the d for denarius came to be the symbol for the penny. In the middle ages, bankers solved the problem of dealing with a plethora of local coinages by inventing the Pounds-Shillings-Pence notation for bookkeeping.) 3. "Dime" does originate in the same word sense as "ten." However, it is specific to a certain time and place. The story is in Breen. In 1585, a man named Simon Steven van Brugghe wrote a book in Dutch and French explaining why a decimal system of coinage has advantages. The word in French of that time was "Disme" from which we got "Dime" in the 1830s. In the early American Republic, if you read the Congressional records (both before and after the current constitution), the word appears as "disme" and was probably pronounced "deem." (As late as the mid-1800s, many German states (duchies, principalities, etc.) and free cities struck coins not on tenths but on fourths, sixths, etc.) You can find them in your Krause world catalogs. 4. Dollar comes from "thaler." Tal or Thal in other German languages is like the traditional English word "dell" or "dale." It means "valley." Big silver coins from "Joachimsthal" (James Valley) in Bohemia were issued in 1519. They were widely copied in size after silver from the Americas flowed through Spain and into Europe. The word "dollar" was applied in the English/Dutch lands to the Spanish 8 reales of the same size as the talers. The Maria Theresia Thaler is still restruck today. Michael ANA R-162953
All of that was a bit misleading. Your enthusiasm is beyond question, of course. No one in Anglo-Saxon times spoke anything like the word "dek" to mean ten. The words they used (dialects varied with place) sounded more like "ten." ("dek" would have meant "deck" or "roof" or "thatch" if it was spoken at all.) The American CENT is called a PENNY because the first cents were about the same size as the British copper pennies of the time. Even though the cent was reduced in size, the word was fixed in popular meaning. The first nickel coins were not "sandwiches." As was noted earlier, and is well recorded in books about American coins, the first small cents were called "nicks" because of their nickel alloy. Nickel is an interesting word itself. You might want to read about it, perhaps in a book about the history of chemisty. Breen gives his own spin, of course. If you build your numismatic library, you will find plenty of fuel for your fire. You clearly are a passionate collector. Michael ANA R-162953
Ah, guess that is different in England, or rather English, then. It is right, of course, that the word "penny" is not derived from denarius. But as for the coins, in the 8th and 9th century Carolingian empire, for example, the words "denarius" (Latin), "denier" (modern French spelling) and "Pfennig" (modern German spelling) referred to exactly the same coin or unit. Christian
as long as I am flogging a dead horse... The word "cent" for the coin we use did not "come from" percent or whatever. It was made up. Yes, comes from the Latin for "hundred" or "hundredth" of course. Even so, no coin had ever had that name before. Nothing had that name before. There was no such thing as a "cent" of whiskey ("ounce" or "dram" would work). The US Mint made up the name and put it on the coin. Some confusion remained, so they added the fraction: 1/100 on the reverse. Michael
That is debatable though many believe it to be so. I find it much more likely that it was derived from the term used in the Netherlands - daalder.
GDJMSP,I think that 'Daalder' is close to the word 'Daler',which comes from Swedish,Danish & Norwegian.
Similar words were used in all of Scandinavia. And in all cases it was a large silver coin. Yes I know that some say daalder or daler derived from thaler or taler - it likely does. But I still think it is more accurate to say that dollar derives from daalder/daler than it is to say it derives from thaler/taler.
Wasn't the dollar begotten by daler who was begotten by thaler who was begotten by some king in Joachimsthal.
Longnine009,the word 'Rixdollar' (which was a coin in Ceylon & a 'money of account' in the Cape of Good Hope) is derived directly from 'Rijksdaalder' & indirectly from 'Reichsthaler'.
Sort of, yes. These words (thaler, daalder, dollar, tolar, etc.) are directly or indirectly derived from the silver mine and mint in St. Joachimsthal. The silver coins from that area were first minted by the counts of Schlick. The town of St. Joachimsthal (called Jáchymov in Czech) is a spa, not far from the famous Karlsbad (cz: Karlovy Vary), by the way. Christian
