In the mountains of northwestern Bohemia, just a few kilometers south of the East German-Czechoslovakian border, is the small town of Jachymov. In the sixteenth century, a silver mine was opened nearby and coins were minted to which the name joachimstaler was applied. In German this was shortened to taler. Shortly afterwards the Dutch or Low German form daler was borrowed into English to refer to the taler and other coins that were patterned after it. From this the word Dollar was adopted by the American Constitution as the money unit of United States of America.

That would be my guess, anyway.

I don't know where the word "dollar" comes from (wait, yes I do, Main Entry: dol·lar Pronunciation: 'dä-l&r Function: noun Usage: often attributive Etymology: Dutch or Low German daler, from German Taler, short for Joachimstaler, from Sankt Joachimsthal, Bohemia, where talers were first made Date: 1553 1 : TALER 2 : any of numerous coins patterned after the taler (as a Spanish peso) 3 a : any of various basic monetary units (as in the U.S. and Canada) -- ), but the typographic symbol is reputed to come from laying a U over a S and getting the $ sign (only it should have two vertical bars, not one).

My psychic powers are telling me that Billytea knows the answer to all these questions.

Ah! The U over S thing, that I think I'd heard before. Cool.

And yay for the etymology too. But I'm still wondering how it got popular. Am also still amused by the old non-decimal or whatever British system in old books. Confusing as hell, but interesting and bizarre.

meara! Welcome back! How was your trip?

I've got nothing on topic to say. But meara was away from the USA, so it's somehow UnAmerican.

[Edit: And I'm looking for someone to share this post # with me]

meara, I was reading the money chart in Merriam-Webster, and wondered that myself. I still don't have mastery of pounds/shillings/bob/whatever as the money system was back in Jane Austen's, or Dickens's, day. Actually, I kept getting the sense that there was more than one overlapping money system, since shillings always seemed to divide up with a remainder left over.

Any kind soul care to explicate?

A pound was twenty shillings (a guinea twenty-one), a shilling twelve pence. So you had to do two divisions (L/20 remainder S, S/12 r D) in order to convert a number to pounds, shillings, and pence.

[L = Pounds (librum), S = Shillings, D = Pence (Denarius).]

[link]

And for conversion to decimal, a shilling is 20 pence.

IIRC, there was a major movement in the post-Revolution America to adopt anything-but-pounds as a monetary system. (Spanish silver dollars were very popular, as were francs -- but both empires were in major straits at the time. 'Dollars' was settled on as a monetary designation that upset the fewest people.)

Also there are other weird oddities you have to learn. A bob is a shilling, a crown is five shillings (I think?), so half a crown is 2s 6d. A farthing is 1/4 of a penny, and a ha'penny is self-explanatory.

The guinea is the weirdest of the lot though.