It is really annoying to hear so many opinions here choosing to believe an alternate version simply because it sounds better to them rather than because of any actual evidence. (Are we still in Hacker News or is it a Sunday thing?) It feels like I'm reading opinions by creationists.<p>Even the us government agrees that the $ symbol is a peso sign. [1]<p>Here is the relevant piece:<p>>>What is the origin of the $ sign?
The origin of the "$" sign has been variously accounted for, however, the most widely accepted explanation is that the symbol is the result of evolution, independently in different places, of the Mexican or Spanish "P's" for pesos, or piastres, or pieces of eight. The theory, derived from a study of old manuscripts, is that the "S" gradually came to be written over the "P," developing a close equivalent of the "$" mark. It was widely used before the adoption of the United States dollar in 1785.<<<p>[1] <a href="http://www.moneyfactory.gov/faqlibrary.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.moneyfactory.gov/faqlibrary.html</a>
What I'd like to know more is why it goes before the quantity and not after.<p>Nobody writes "it weighs lb. 10" or "it's m 20 long". Or even "I had %20 of it".<p>Subconsciously I always read "$10" as "dollar ten". It drives me a little crazy.
How interesting.
'Paisa' used in India as currency also sounds like peso, however, seems to have different origin:<p>"""The word paisa is from Hindi & Urdu paisā, a quarter-anna coin, ultimately from Sanskrit term padāṁśa meaning 'quarter part', from pada "foot or quarter" and aṁśa "part".""" - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisa" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisa</a>
There are some alternative theories on this, too. The one I learned was the sign being derived from the Pillars of Hercules (two vertical bars) with a banner (the "S") wrapped around it, reading "[non] plus ultra", as adopted by Charles V for the Spanish coat of arms and later stamped on the reverse of Spanish dollar coins.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Columnas_Plus_Ultra.png" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Columnas_Plus_Ultra.png</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar</a><p>[Edit:] There's actually a bit of irony in this, considering the Pillars of Hercules were marking the end of the world (as lined out by the banner "non plus ultra") and the minted silver coming from the New World beyond ...
Hrm. At one point on the internets, I read that it was just the letters 'U' and 'S' (for United States) overlaid on top of each other. And over time, we lost the round pipe at the bottom, and one of the lines.<p>It seemed like a plausible story, and because I wasn't doing hardcore research, I didn't look into it further. Now, I always wonder if some fun fact I have in my head is actually true or not.<p>Reminds me of that quote about Abe Lincoln and the internet.
@ has a well known meaning in Spanish, it is the symbol of "arroba" which is an old unit of weight, like a pound, ounce, etc. I still remember hearing on the local markets sellers pricing their goods for its arroba weight. In fact, when we read an email out load we do not say someone at somwhere dot com, we say someone arroba somewhere dot com.
The evolution of the £ (pound) symbol has a similar, fascinating history behind it too. It was recently discussed on a 99% Invisible podcast [1].<p>[1] <a href="http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/octothorpe/" rel="nofollow">http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/octothorpe/</a>
I've heard this etymology before, but the article would be a lot more convincing if it showed an actual in-the-wild example of the "intermediate form" of the symbol, with the P and S exactly superimposed on each other...
Until keyboards were everywhere (which was a while ago, yes), I wasn't used to seeing the $ with a single vertical line in a money context. Myth or not, it made the interlocking U S very believable. It just makes me wonder which came first, and how the double line came about, if it wasn't there originally.
NB: In all Spanish-speaking countries that I know of, you can call the currency "peso" even if that's not its official name. In Costa Rica, for example, they will often say "cien pesos" rather than "cien colones" if they're in an informal situation or mood.
"Alternatively, the $ symbol derives from the scroll on the pillar, on the reverse of the "pillar dollar" variety of pieces of eight [Spanish Dollars]."<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar#mediaviewer/File:Philip_V_Coin.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar#mediaviewer/File...</a><p>Which you can clearly see here:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar#mediaviewer/File:Philip_V_Coin.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar#mediaviewer/File...</a>
The S and the pillars story seems simpler, and also accounts for the $ with two vertical bars.<p>Here in Argentina, we still call money: "silver", as in "Do you have silver to pay for that?"<p>It was called "peso"(weight) because you used to WEIGH your money instead of "counting" it.<p>It is funny that we still call it "silver" and "weight" nowadays when fiat-money is everywhere.
That's interesting. Where I live (India), we didn't have a currency symbol until recently. Our currency is the Indian Rupee and we used to prefix "Rs." and "Re." to the value.<p>The govt. invited people from around the country to send in their designs and we finally chose one (20B9 on unicode). But it took us 2 years to start using the symbol on currency notes.
Here is a $ sign from pre 1700 Spanish coin
<a href="http://www.ancientresource.com/lots/shipwreck-pirate-coins.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ancientresource.com/lots/shipwreck-pirate-coins.h...</a> ( #CS20730 ). There are more of these that pre date that, so this article is fairly opinionated.
Fun trivia: When Americans went to East Asia with their funny money, the Asians quickly replaced the $ sign with a similar-looking local character: 弗.<p>Nowadays in Japan and Korea, you often see headlines like "1兆弗" (1 trillion U.S. dollars).<p>But 弗 originally means "not". So American money is not real money ;)
And I remember than 'ampersand' is 'and per se and' from the alphabet song, where the 'and' sign used to be included at the end. Its been corrupted to the 'ampersand'. Any idea if there's any history behind that?
It's fascinating to understand that originally there was no "official" US currency, only that the Spanish dollar was circulating as a sort of international currency. The US dollar was then defined a unit of weight of either gold or silver and not some floating, independent notion of value. Anyone could bring a quantity of gold or silver into the mint and have it turned into a dollar coin. Of course, that original notion has been inflated away and the dollar has lost some 99% of its value.<p>One of my favorite sites for seeing the effect of debasement is <a href="http://www.coinflation.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.coinflation.com/</a>.
Tyrol never was German (except when anexed by the Nazis, that is...). At most, it was part of the Ostrogothic kingdom (up to 550 or so); After, it was its own county, ruled by counts apointed by the Holy Roman Emperor, and then (1369, with the death of the last countess, Magarete Maultasch) it became part of the Kingdom of Austria that was being built by the house Habsburg. So by the time the silver mentioned in the article was found, Tyrol was firmly in Habsburg hands, and ever since has been part of Austria (particularly, the region with the silver).<p>Disclaimer: I am Tyrolean... :)
> And because the US dollar was named after the Spanish peso de ocho "dollar" coin<p>I am still not sure where the word "dollar" comes from though. If we are using the sign for pesos, who not use the word "pesos" instead of "dollar"?
Turns out that the Dollar (0.88 Euro), derived from the Dutch word Daalder, today has the exact same value as this Daalder (2.50 guilders) before it became the Euro (2.20371 guilders), after calculating the inflation rate.
There are many different explanations floating around. The one I like the most is that it is actually US and that U is placed on top of the S. That's why there are often two vertical lines.
Ugh, pop-journalism. Did anyone even wonder where the word Joachimthal came from that gave the dollar it's name? From my rudimentary German, I would guess [Saint] Joachim valley, in other words the location of the silver mine.
That's just the nice version that goes around. It actually represents devices like manacles. Used for counting slaves.<p>Our civilization is still based on a type of wage-based slavery.<p>The euro symbol is another example.