The word “dollar” is an adaptation of the name of a 16th century Czech coin, the “joachimsthaler”. This old silver coin began to be minted in 1519 in a mine in Bohemia, a region of the present-day Czech Republic. It gained popularity and began to circulate across Europe. To facilitate communication, it was first nicknamed “thaler”; later, it had the name “translated”: it became “daler” in the Nordic countries, “tolar” in Slovenia, “dollar” among the British… In England, the name never officially baptized the local currency, which has been called the pound since the year 775, when the unit of weight equivalent to 0.4536 kilo also designated the English currency. Even so, it is possible to find references to the “dollar” as a synonym for money in England, in William Shakespeare’s plays. Although the United States was colonized by the British, it was Spain that ended up having a decisive influence on the baptism of American currency. The Spanish peso, which was used in transactions when the United States was still a colony, was popularly called the “Spanish dollar”. In 1861, the United States government officially introduced its currency with only the “last name” removed. The curious thing is that the original “thaler” went out of circulation a few years later, in 1873. The dollar managed to take root and is now the official currency of 23 countries, including Canada, Australia, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
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