J and �

[rosowsky]

What is the origin of the letter J used for the � sign?

[Quizmonster]

I've never heard of the letter 'J' being used as a '�' sign. Is this a typo for the '�' or 'L' sign/letter? If so, it is from the Latin word 'Libra' meaning 'pound'. This word was abbreviated to 'lb' for pound in weight and to '�' for pound in money. If you really did mean 'J', then I apologise for wasting your time.

[darth vader]

quizmonster i want to have your babys. so that's why it's called lb!. Does the Latin language explain why old pennies were called d? (and if so what does d stand for?)

[Chinajan]

The latin for penny was denarius, denarii plural. Hence the d. And while I'm on, can I just have a quick moan about the phrase "one pence". New or old it is "one penny", please. And you can't have my babies. I'm a girl.

[Quizmonster]

As a matter of interest, Darth, and to complete the 'LSD' trio...that's money symbolism and not lysergic acid diethylamide!..the 's' stood for the Latin 'solidi, which was a gold Roman coin. This name was adopted into Middle English, though we later attached the German name 'Schilling' to it and, later still, dropped the overly Germanic 'c'.

[Quizmonster]

I should, of course, have made it clear that the singular coin was called a solidus...solidi being the plural. So the whole thing was 'Librae, solidi, denarii'...Lsd.

[smorodina]

I may be able to explain this. From the name I am going to assume that rosowsky is perhaps slavonic to some degree and therefore may not be using the standard western european windows codepage which includes the pound sign (which I cannot produce). I use the cyrillic windows codepage which has no pound sign and reproduces it as J. So to me the question looked like 'J and J'. If rosowsky sees a J where a pound sign would be expected, he can change the codepage on the view menu, encoding, and all should appear correctly.

[paulz]

So enlighten me, where did florin come into the equation, and what the origin of sixpence being called a tanner. And finally why was shilling referred to as bob? Ta

[Quizmonster]

The florin was originally a Florentine gold coin with a lily stamped on one side. The name came from Italian 'fiorino' from 'fiore' meaning a lily. That, in turn, had come fromLatin 'flos/floris' = flower.

The Oxford English Dictionary says the origin of 'tanner' is uncertain. Here are a few possible sources, however. A man called Tanner was a coin-designer in the reign of George II; however, he died in 1775 and George II died in 1760. The very first use of the word 'tanner' to mean 'sixpence' did not appear in print before 1811. You would have expected the word to emerge somewhere during their lifetimes rather than about two generations later. I very much doubt we'd decide to nickname a coin today after a designer who worked in 1950. Here are three more possibilities, the first of which seems - to me at least - to be more likely. The Italian word for 'small change' is (was?) 'denaro', which sounds pretty like 'tanner'. There is also the Romany word 'tawno' meaning 'little one' and the sixpence was a small coin. Again, the word sounds very like 'tanner'. Finally, there may be a connection with 'thaler' - from which we get 'dollar' - an old German silver coin. Not quite so close in sound, but still a possibility. Take your pick!

As fo 'bob' = shilling, again no-one is certain. It is certainly true that there was a French coin in the 14th century called a 'bobe', so there just could be a connection, though it seems a bit thin.

[paulz]

Thanks Quizzie, knew I could rely on you