Dollar Etymology

[brokencompass]

I came across how dollar came to called the dollar and found it interesting. Thought I would share

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar#Etymology

In the 16th century, Count Hieronymus Schlick of Bohemia began minting coins known as Joachimstalers (from German thal, or nowadays usually Tal, "valley", cognate with "dale" in English), named for Joachimstal, the valley where the silver was mined (St. Joachim's Valley, now Jáchymov; then part of the Holy Roman Empire, now part of the Czech Republic) Joachimstaler was later shortened to the German Taler, a word that eventually found its way into Danish and Swedish as daler, Dutch as daalder, Ethiopian as ታላሪ (talari), Italian as tallero, Flemish as daelder, and English as dollar

[<k>]

And Slovenia had the tolar, before joining the euro.

[Figleaf]

Dollar in Scotland (the Scots were the first to have a coin called dollar), Tala in Samoa, Dollar in anglicized countries from New Zealand to Canada and back again and, of course, Jéfimok in Russian.

BTW, these people who believe that Flemish is a separate language and that it's spelled differently from Dutch never fail to make me laugh.

I wonder why no one has tried to come up with a list of currencies whose name is derived from denarius.

Peter

[Harald]

Not all derivatives of the word "taler" are direct ones.
Some are secondary, like the word "dollar" itself which was an adaptation of a Spanish derivative.
The "tala" and "tara" in the Pacific region are adaptations of the English word, they are, so to speak,
grand-grand children of the German word.

cheers
--
Harald

[Chinasmith]

For currencies derived from "Denarius" see:  Dictionary of Numismatic Names  by Albert Frey (1917; reprinted 1947 and 1974) and Dictionary of Coin Names  by Adrian Room (1987). Room's book lists the following derived from Denarius:  Denier, Decenario, Decime, Decimo, Decussis, Denarino, Denaro, Dinar, Dinero, Dinheiro. There are also several encyclopedias of numismatics, the best by Edward Jung, published in England about 20 years ago.