"It's Proto-Indo-European for "money" "

[Ken Brown]

Tim May wrote:
 
> Left as an exercise: the PIE origins of "mark" (another common word for
> a unit of money), "dollar" (ditto), and "crown." For extra credit,
> "peso," "peseta," and variants. For extra extra credit, "florin."

Just guessing for fun here, not looking them up  (My Oxford dictionary 
would tell me too quickly, as would any search engine, though maybe not
as authoritatively. I'll check them out in a day or two)

"Mark" is old word for borderlands. Sounds unlikely. Maybe it is related
to "market"?  I wonder if there is some word for "traveller" that is
behind "mark", "market", "merchant", or "march"?  A word for traveller
could come to mean a foreigner in one context & a pedlar or merchant in
another.  Stranger things have happened - one IE word, also meaning
traveller, lies behind both "guest" and "host" (in both senses) as well
as "hostile", "hospitable", "hospital", "hostel", & "hotel".   Or is it
"mark" as in sign or symbol, a coin "marked" with some token of the
issuers? And "marchen" (pardon my lack of umlaut) are folk tales.
(Travellers tales?).  "March" the month is the month of Mars (Ares),
associated with war - another possible link to borderlands but it sounds
too far-fetched, the old Germans had plenty of their own godlets without
importing Roman or Greek ones.

"Dollar" is "thaler" or "taler", German for "valley", and related to
English "dale". I half remember some story about silver  mined in
such-and-such a place being minted into Austrian coins called
<whatever>thalers, later shortened to "taler" and used as such in north
America and the Caribbean.  Maybe there is a further connection to other
words implying low or things or states - dell, doldrums, dolour - I
think the resemblance between "dale" and "vale" is coincidence.

"crown" (AKA "krone", "kroner", "krona", "koruna") is  pretty obvious,
being coins stamped with a picture of a crown (presumably to show that
the king issued them) I've no idea of the earlier history of those
words. I guess that "crown" must be related to "corona". Perhaps it is
connected to "curve" or "circle" - no, that sounds far-fetched. It can
also mean the top of the head in English but that might just be a more
recent extension of meaning.

Many currency names originate as units of weight. Being British I think
of pounds and pence as money, so maybe "peso"/"peseta" were words for a
unit of weight, perhaps etymologically related to "pound" - that feels
more likely than a connection to "penny",  because there is a French
word for weight "pois", and Spanish is close to French.

A Florin is a coin stamped with a picture of a flower.  I think that was
the symbol of the city of Florence AKA Firenze, but the name has since
been used in Britain and Hungary ("Forint"). "Florin"  is recently
connected with "flower", "flourish" and so on & more distantly to
"bloom" I think.  Maybe a PIE root to do with blooming, flowing, flume,
or even flame????  Some idea of the sap rising in the spring & things
bursting to life?  

German often has "f" or "pf" where we have "f" so maybe a connection to
"pflanzen" which has to be related to "plant" and I think distantly to
"clan" (via Celtic P<->K)  and maybe even "branch" and "clade" - the
idea of a tree? 

I think I need to go and lie down. And I mustn't even speculate about 
"penny", "pound", "lira", "lev", "lek", "lat" "dinar", "drachma",
"shekel", "sol",  "rouble", "rupee", anna, "dam", "s(c)hilling", 
"franc", "real", "rial", "riyal",  "escudo",  "afghani", and that
grotesque name for a currency, the "euro"? (Just saying that it is named
after Europe gets no points at all. Or even marks. Same goes for
"Afghani").  All (with 1 or 2 possible exceptions) good Indo-European
names. (I suspect "bolivar" isn't IE either). Not to mention the slang
terms - "bob", "quid", "nicker". You Americans have "buck" (no idea),
"quarter" (obvious but silly) and "dime" (? mispronounciation of
something to do with "decimal"?)

With luck, about a quarter of that bears some resemblance to truth. I
won't say I made it all up over a cup of tea in a break from work,
but...

Ken Brown


Nuts! cypherpunks at lne rejected the posting!