Dollar

Dollar is the name of more than 25 currencies. The United States dollar, named after the international currency known as the Spanish dollar, was established in 1792 and is the first so named that still survives. Others include the Australian dollar, Brunei dollar, Canadian dollar, Eastern Caribbean dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Jamaican dollar, Liberian dollar, Namibian dollar, New Taiwan dollar, New Zealand dollar, Singapore dollar, Trinidad and Tobago dollar, and several others. The symbol for most of those currencies is the dollar sign $; the same symbol is used by many countries using peso currencies.

The name 'dollar' originates from the tolar which was the name of a 29-gram (1.0 oz) silver coin called the Joachimsthaler minted in 1519 in the western part of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). The word thaler itself comes from the German word Thal, i.e. 'valley'.

On 15 January 1520, the Kingdom of Bohemia began minting coins from silver mined locally in Joachimsthal and marked on reverse with the Bohemian lion. The coins were named Joachimsthaler after the town, becoming shortened in common usage to thaler or taler. The town's name is derived from Saint Joachim, coupled with the German word Thal (Tal in modern spelling), which means 'valley' (cf. the English term dale); the coin is thus "from the valley of [St] Joachim".

This name found its way into other languages, for example:

In contrast to other languages which adopted the second part of word joachimsthaler, the first part found its way into Russian language and became efimok [ru], yefimok (ефимок).

The predecessor of the Joachimsthaler was the Guldengroschen or Guldiner which was a large silver coin originally minted in Tirol in 1486 and introduced into the Duchy of Saxony in 1500. The King of Bohemia wanted a similar silver coin, which became the Joachimsthaler.

The Joachimsthaler of the 16th century was succeeded by the longer-lived Reichsthaler of the Holy Roman Empire, used from the 16th to 19th centuries. The Netherlands also introduced its own dollars in the 16th century: the Burgundian Cross Thaler (Bourgondrische Kruisdaalder), the German-inspired Rijksdaalder, and the Dutch lion dollar (leeuwendaalder). The latter coin was used for Dutch trade in the Middle East, in the Dutch East Indies and West Indies, and in the Thirteen Colonies of North America.

For the English North American colonists, however, the Spanish peso or "piece of eight" had always held first place, and this coin was also called the "dollar" as early as 1581. Spanish dollars or "pieces of eight" were distributed widely in the Spanish colonies in the New World and in the Philippines.