Currency names: last man standing

[Chinasmith]

"Right, and right.   Interesting, by the way, that in German the word "Rappen" is the plural of Rappe which refers to a black horse. Where does that come from? The horse is black like a raven ... and that (Rabe) is also where the Swiss denomination (probably) is derived from. Seems that the eagle on certain coins was colloquially called, or considered to be, a raven."

The Rappe or Rappen is derived from "rabe" meaning raven. The coin was first issued in th 14th century, struck at Freiburg in Breisgau, with the image of a raven. Later the term was applied to any small coin with the image of a bird. In Switzerland, the Rappen was originally the tenth part of the Batzen, but when the Latin Monetary Union was set up in the 19th century, the Rappen was changed to centime, to follow the systems adopted by other European countries in the Union.

As for Filler, this is not an old name, having been created only in 1892 to correspond to the Heller of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The origin of the word is uncertain.

[Chinasmith]

The primary source of information on coin denominations, their origins and history, is:  Dictionary of Numismatic Names  by Albert R. Frey. This book, over 300 pages, was originally published in 1917 by the American Numismatic Society of New York. It was reprinted in 1947, and reprinted again in 1974 with a 94 page glossary of numismatic terms in English, French, German, Italian and Swedish, compiled by Mark M. Salton. However, having been compiled nearly 100 years ago, many coin denominations are missing --- all those created in the past hundred years. In addition, Frey didn't consider paper money denominations. There are quite a few denominations used today on paper money which never existed as a coin. Another useful though older source is Hazlitt's Coinage of the European Continent.  And as mentioned above, there is Adrian Room's "Dictionary of Coin Names" published in 1987. The focus of this work is the etymology or origin of the word rather than a history of the coin. The book runs 250 pages and includes an appendix of coin families -- that is, denominations which are related, usually in their origin. An example of this woud be the "Crown" family, which includes Corona, Coronato, Couronne, Korona, Koruna, Krona, Krone and Kroon. These all derive from the Latin for "crown".  Another would be the "shield" family -- Ecu, Escudo, Escudillo, Scudino and Scudo. Or the "lion" group -- Leeuw, Leone, Leopard, Leu and Lev.  An interesting origin is the Lek denomination of Albania. This comes from the Albanian name for Alexander the Great.