Dollar

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Canadian one-dollar coin (Loonie)

Image:United States one dollar bill, obverse.jpg

United States one-dollar bill

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One New Taiwan dollar

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Australian one-dollar coin

Image:500 Zimbabwean dollar note.JPG

500 old Zimbabwean dollars

The dollar (often represented by the dollar sign: "$") is the name of the official currency in several countries, dependencies and other regions.

1 History
2 Related names in modern currencies
3 National currencies called "dollar"
4 See also
5 References

[edit] History

The name Thaler (from German thal, or nowadays usually Tal, "valley", cognate with "dale" in English) came from the Czech coin Guldengroschen ("great guilder", being of silver but equal in value to a gold guilder), minted from the silver from a rich mine at Joachimsthal - Jáchymov (St. Joachim's Valley) in Bohemia (then part of the Czech Kingdom, a member of the Holy Roman Empire, now part of the Czech Republic). The basis of "thaler" comes from Joachimsthaler.^[1] The name is historically related to the tolar in Slovenia (Slovenian tolar) and Bohemia, the daalder in the Netherlands and daler in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

The name "Spanish dollar" was used for a Spanish coin, the "real de a ocho" and later peso, worth eight reals (hence the nickname "pieces of eight"), which was widely circulated during the 18th century in the Spanish colonies in the New World and in Spanish territories in Asia, namely in the Philippines.The use of the Spanish dollar and the Maria Theresa thaler as legal tender for the early United States are the reasons for the name of the nation's currency.^{[citation needed]} However, the word dollar was in use in the English language as slang or mis-pronunciation for the thaler for about 200 years before the American Revolution, with many quotes in the plays of Shakespeare referring to dollars as money. Spanish dollars were in circulation in the Thirteen Colonies that became the United States, and were legal tender in Virginia.

The Dutch lion dollar circulated throughout the Middle East and was imitated in several German and Italian cities. It was also popular in the Dutch East Indies as well as in the Dutch New Netherlands Colony (New York). The lion dollar also has circulated throughout the English colonies during the 17th and early 18th centuries. Examples circulating in the colonies were usually fairly well worn so that the design was not fully distinguishable, thus they were sometimes referred to as "dog dollars."[1]

Coins known as dollars were also in use in Scotland during the 17th century, and there is a claim that the use of the English word, and perhaps even the use of the coin, began at the University of St Andrews. This explains the sum of 'Ten thousand dollars' mentioned in Macbeth (Act I, Scene II), although the real Macbeth upon whom the play was based lived in the 11th century, making the reference anachronistic; however this is not rare in Shakespeare's work.

In the early 19th century, a British five-shilling piece, or crown, was sometimes called a dollar, probably because its appearance was similar to the Spanish dollar. This expression appeared again in the 1940s, when U.S. troops came to the UK during World War II. At the time a U.S. dollar was worth about 5s., so some of the U.S. soldiers started calling it a dollar. Consequently, they called the half crown "half a dollar", and the expression caught on among some locals and could be heard into the 1960s.

In the early days of the United States, the dollar was a defined unit of trade equal to 412.5 grains (26.73 g) of 90% silver. Today the closest definition to a dollar comes from the United States code Title 31, Section 5116, paragraph b, subsection 2, "The Secretary [of the Treasury] shall sell silver under conditions the Secretary considers appropriate for at least $1.292929292 a fine troy ounce." However Federal Reserve banks are only prejudiced to deliver tax credits instead of money. The silver content of U.S. coinage was mostly removed in 1965 and the dollar essentially became a baseless free-floating fiat currency; though the U.S. Mint continues to make silver $1 bullion coins at this weight. It is believed that the original green color and other specific designs of a paper dollar were introduced by 2 Armenian brothers from Massachusetts who were Near-Eastern immigrants.^{[citation needed]}

Continued Chinese demand for silver led several countries, notably the United Kingdom, United States, and Japan to mint trade dollars in the 19th and early 20th centuries, often of slightly different weights to their domestic coinage. Silver dollars reaching China (whether Spanish, Trade, or other) were often stamped with Chinese characters known as "chop marks" which indicated that that particular coin had been assayed by a well-known merchant and determined genuine.

[edit] Related names in modern currencies

The tala is based on the Samoan pronunciation of the word "dollar". Likewise, the name of the smaller unit, seneiti, equates to "cent".
The Slovenian tolar had the same origin as dollar, i.e. thaler.

[edit] National currencies called "dollar"

Some of these are called dollars in English, but by a different name in the native language of the country. See the navigational box below for a complete list.

The name has also been applied to the international dollar, a hypothetical unit of currency that has the same purchasing power that the U.S. dollar has in the United States at a given point in time.