Currency names used by only one country

[<k>]

Gambian dalasi (or is that somehow related to MT thaler?)

Does sound like 'dollar'.

[Figleaf]

From the wolof word Dala, the nickname of a 5 franc coin.

Peter

[translateltd]

Egyptian guerche

Guerche = kurus = qirsh = gersh and various other transcriptions.

[translateltd]

From the wolof word Dala, the nickname of a 5 franc coin.

Peter

Which in turn just *has* to have come from 'dollar' at some stage.

[FosseWay]

Egyptian guerche

Egyptian? Or Ethiopian?

[translateltd]

Egyptian? Or Ethiopian?

I've only seen this French transliteration used with regard to coins of Ottoman Egypt ("ochr-el-guerche" = 'ushr-el-ghurush = 1/10 piastre).

[FosseWay]

Sorry, you're right. The Ethiopian coins of this denomination are spelt ghersh in KM. I've no idea how accurate a representation that is of what's on the coins, as I can't read Amharic at all.

Guerche from غرش hadn't occurred to me. I thought the standard French word for that denomination was piastre.

[translateltd]

Guerche from غرش hadn't occurred to me. I thought the standard French word for that denomination was piastre.

I would say it was, too.  One's a translation or equivalent, the other a transliteration of the Arabic sounds as heard by French ears and rendered using French spelling (which is why we have Ouagadougou in West Africa, rather than the simpler "Wagadugu" if the Brits had done it).

The Ethiopian denomination you mention - I'd forgotten about that one - will certainly be a cognate or a borrowing of the Arabic term.

[translateltd]

Just looked at an image of an Ethopian gersh on-line and matched the letters in the exergue against this table:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amharic_language

and get

1 gǝrš

so it's the same word.

[<k>]

Costa Rican Colon

Peter

Debatable. According to Wikipedia:

The colón is the currency of two Central American nations:

    Costa Rica
    El Salvador – since 2001 used in parallel with the United States dollar

The Costa Rican colón is divided into 100 céntimos; the El Salvadoran colón is divided into 100 centavos.

[<k>]

Another name I have found is the besa (plural bese). In Italian Somaliland from 1909 to 1925, 64 bese were equal to 1 rupia,

Does anyone know the etymology of the word besa ?

[Figleaf]

Paisa. Not really a unique currency name.

Peter

[<k>]

Thank you, Peter. Immediately obvious, when I saw the word paisa.