2699: The Currency Symbol Bars are Not as Old as You Think | May 11, 2024

It’s hard to miss the fact that currency symbols on every inhabited continent have a convention to write a letter with a slash through it, but this is actually a new standard. In the case of the two older currency symbols still in use that employ this, $ and £, in the case of the dollar is is incidental, as the symbol derived from a P over an S for ‘peso’, but in the case of the pound symbol, even the Bank of England doesn’t known the exact reason. It was originally simply 𝕷 ℒ or written lower case only getting the bar at the earliest in the 17th century, but the other predecimal sterling symbols (e.g. s and d) never got the bar.

This eventually became seen as standard practice in $ and £, spreading to other currencies, and many older currencies like the Russian ruble ₽ only got the bar later, in this case in 2013 via online polling, and even pre-Euro Dutch guilder ƒ or German mark ℳ︁ did not have this extra bar. Meanwhile, many currencies introduced in the 20th or 21st century do include this bar. This is especially true of places associated with the Spanish and British Empires, or America, but not the French or Dutch Empires for instance where the bar was never used, even where new currencies were invented. 

While this bar is primarily seen on currencies in the Latin script even in areas with a different writing system like the Korean won ₩ or the Lao kip ₭, it also appears occasionally with other scripts, like the Ukrainian hryvnia ₴, Turkish lira ₺, Georgian lari ₾, or since 2010 the Indian rupee ₹. Most Arabic and native Southeast Asian scripts don’t add slashes to symbols, and just use abbreviations.

2682: The Symbol for Penny was d Apr 24, 2024

For over 50 years in Britain, the symbol for a penny is simply ‘p’, written at the end of a price like 99p, but before decimalisation in 1971, Brits would write out pence as ‘d’, also at the end. This pre-decimal system, which saw 20 shillings to the pound and 12 pence to the shilling, is often referred to as £sd or Lsd as an abbreviation of these units of sterling. For instance, something costing 7 shillings, and 9 pence might be written 7/9d. This raises the question of why ‘d’? Even the ‘s’ for shillings, not as commonly seen as the other two letters, only coincidentally had the same initial letter. 

Rather, these abbreviations come from Latin, where ‘pounds’ is ‘librae’ (hence the L-based £ symbol), ‘shillings’ is ‘solidi’, and ‘pence’ is ‘denarii’ (all written in their plural form). These words are no longer used, but the word ‘denarius’ led to many other words for modern currencies, ranging from Serbia to Bahrain, or just money as in the Spanish ‘dinero’. 

2408: Renminbi Jul 25, 2021

The currency of China is known as the Yuan, a name shared or associated with other currencies of East Asia, but actually this is not its official name. It is actually known as the Renminbi, abbreviated RMB, spelt as 人民币 in simplified Chinese; it means 'people's currency'. As such, a yuan only a basic unit of the renminbi despite that being the basis for the currency as a whole and not actually a subdivision, though it is divided by the fen and jiao. This distinction between the name of the currency and the currency itself is also seen in '(pound) sterling' and 'pound'. with the currency of the UK, though not for the same reason.

2368: Sir Isaac Newton's Anti-Counterfeit Technique Jun 12, 2021

In the Middle Ages and even into the 17th century, coin clipping (also including shaving) wherein some amount of the money is removed. One way devised as an anti-counterfeit measure by Sir Isaac Newton in 1696 when he was Warden of the Royal Mint was to use grooves on the edge such that shaving and clipping would be easier spotted. One phrase inscribed on these coins after this was DECUS ET TUTAMEN meaning "an ornament and a safeguard". This is actually a phrase from Virgil's Aeneid and was printed on British coins for many hundreds of years.

2356: piastre May 31, 2021

A number of the names of currencies used around the Middle East originated in Italy, and in particular Venice. Along with 'dinar' and 'lira', it is the 'piastre' which is used for the ultimate subdivision for the currencies of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, both Sudans, Syria, Turkey, and until 2007 Cyprus. All of these have currencies with a local 'pound' except for Jordan (dinar) and Turkey (lira). It was also used as the main currency of French Indochina. The name for this though comes from Italian, literally "thin metal plate" and basically equated to a peso (i.e. 1/8 of a coin). Due to trading with the Venetians and its adoption by the Ottomans, it is now used all over the Levant region. Many of these only nominally use the piastre since the currency itself is so weak, such as Lebanon which rarely even uses its ل.ل.100 coin. Also, all of these are decimalized except for Cyprus which subdivided into 180.

2205: L or M: What's the Symbol for Lesotho's Currency Dec 28, 2020

Although there are apparent exceptions, many currency-symbols, especially newer ones, will be consistent with the pronounced names of the currency, like euro, €, ruble, ₱, won, ₩ (note that ₱ comes from Cyrillic: рубль). The symbol for the currency the Lesotho is the Lesotho Loti is: M. This isn't from a foreign language as with the pound £ or the dollar $, and comes from a native word meaning 'mountain'. Instead this M comes from the plural 'maloti' and indeed while this is the symbol for the general currency, for reference to 1 loti people will use L, though this isn't worth much so is not so common. In effect therefore this is an abbreviation and not exactly a symbol, though that said the subdivisions 'sente' (plural lisente') would not have their own abbreviation.

2201: farthing Dec 24, 2020

In old British currency a farthing was a fraction of a penny, but also happens to be somewhat related to a 'riding' as in the divisions of land in Yorkshire. This is because one can understand 'farthing' as 'fourth-ing' (i.e. 1/4 of a penny or in other words 1 / 960th of a pound) from the Old English 'fēorðing', and a 'riding' is from 'trithing' (i.e. a third) in Old English. As a point of information, there were different types and subdivisions of a farthing, including 'third farthings' (1/12 of a penny) and 'quarter farthings' (1/16 of penny). Farthings also referred to divisions of land in places like Gloucestershire.

2044: dinar Jul 20, 2020

Lots of Arab countries use the Lira as currency because of Italian use in trade, and this is mostly true of the dinar. In Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain, as well as Serbia and North Macedonia the dinar is used, but in the case of all former Yugoslav states динар and the rest this comes from Arabic دِينَار‎. 'Dinar' itself though stems back further to the Latin 'dēnārius' meaning 'ten each' once used in the Roman Empire. Other Muslim-majority states have used over the years as well.

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2040: lira Jul 16, 2020

The Lira was the old currency of Italy before the Euro, along with Malta, San Marino and the Vatican. The fact then that it would come from Latin 'libra' for 'pound (of gold)' shouldn't be too surprising, but what's more surprising is that is is still used in Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria, and was used in Egypt, Israel, and Cyprus to name a few. Actually, this is because of the Venetian Lira which was once widely circulated around the Mediterranean and eventually the Ottoman Empire, but also other translations like the French Livre used for 1013 years or the still-used British pounds are actually quite common.

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1988: Pound Signs: Both £ and # May 25, 2020

Both the £ and # symbols are known as pound signs, but not for the same things; the former is for the currency and the latter is for the weight. Still, despite their apparent vision they actually come from the same abbreviation. Both come as a quicker way to write the letters lb., themselves short for the Latin 'libra' meaning 'pound [weight]' or 'scale'. The use of # as a number sign only came about from computer coding.

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1017: £ Sep 21, 2017

The symbols for the currencies euro, €, ruble, ₱, won, ₩, and the yen and yuan, ¥, and many others including the no longer used Dutch florin, ƒ, are all at least partially based upon the first letter for the name of the currency, though the euro is also said to be from the Greek lunate epsilon, ϵ, as Greece is said to be the cradle of European civilization. Still, the dollar-sign, $ and the pound-sign, £—though the symbols are not arbitrary—do not appear as obvious necessarily. The £ comes from the first letter of the name for the currency as many others do, but in this case the name is from Latin, not the native language. The Latin word for 'pound', as in a weight or balance, was 'libra', related to other words from Romance languages like the French 'livre' of the same meaning, as well as the source of the abbreviation 'lb.' for pounds when referring to weight.