WHERE YOUR MONEY GETS ITS NAME

Shannon News, 20 November 1928, Page 1

WHERE YOUR MONEY GETS ITS NAME

If you were to go to British Guiana you would find coins bearing the inscription “One Stiver’ ’ in circulation,. Furthermore, they are made at the Royal Mint. Most of our slang names for coins are of high antiquity (writes David Neville in the Daily Mail), They have trickled down to us from an era when currency and exchanges were less highly organised, and, provided the metal and weight were up to standard, it mattered little in what land the coins had been minted.

You may see the same state 1 of things in Levante to-day. I remember once, in Alexandereta being given change for an English sovereign in 23 different currencies, including a tetradraehm .of a Homan Emperor. Therefore you will find the names of foreign coins living on in popular usage. A bob is the fourteenth cenaury French bobe. A dollar is the gulden, first coined at Joachmsthaler, whose name of “Joachmsthaler gulden” w r as abbreviated into thaler, and corrupted into dollar. “Tanner” came to us from India, where the East India Company’s troops found the local tanga, the nearest equivalent to the nimble sixpence at home. The dicky (the So. th African name for a threepenny bit) was the coin which Kaffirs exchanged for the ticket given them in payment for wages. Colour and size play tlieir part in the allocation of names. A “brown” and a “yellow boy” are as easily understandable as the French blanche monnaie, but it is not everyone who realises that the old thieves' slang of “blunt” for gold coin, is derived from “blonde monnaie.”

The first guinea was coined in 1663 for the use of the Boyal Company" of Adventurers trading on the Guinea Coast of West Africa, so that its name is easily explained. It was not until 20 years or more later, however, that it became common currency at home. By that time James 11. sat upon the throne, and it was promptly dubbed a “Jimmy.” Those were days when cheques were little used, and for the conSrenience; of eustomei's banks issued guineas in rouleaux, or packets, of 50.

Just about the same time the first galloways had been introduced from Scotland, and popular fancy, amused by this half-sized quadruped, called half a rouleaux, of 25 guineas, a pony. The term is still in common use in sporting circles. Lastly the word money itself is very old, as old as the Roman temple of Juno Moneta, the mint from which it takes its name.