Short Stuff: Currency Symbols

Origins of the dollar sign

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1:08Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too sitting in for Dave. So this is short stuff. And Chuck, we've talked so much about currency over the years, but we've never talked about this, and I think it's high time. This is a good pick for you. Thank you. We're talking about currency symbols and what they mean and where they came from, and we'll start with the dollar. We're looking at you, United States and Canada and Namibia and New Zealand and 17 other countries that use the dollar. It comes from the Spanish peso, apparently, which has been around since the 15th century.

1:40The peso de ocho are pieces of eight. Did not know that. And the eventual United States would model their dollar after the peso. Did not know that either. And in fact, Chuck, they think that the dollar sign came from people abbreviating the word peso. So they would say, P, S. And somebody eventually was like, you know what? I can really save some space if I wrote the S over the P. Someone else came along and said, you know what? We could save even more space if we got rid of the round part of the P.

2:11And someone else said, oh, my God, you guys just created a dollar sign. That's right. That first appeared in print as the dollar sign after 1800. And there are three iterations. I guess the first P, S was the first one. The single stroke through the S was the second one. And then, as all elementary school children know and love, the double vertical lines through the S is yet another version. I've always I've never really thought it out loud, but I I've always thought of that as meaning like now you're talking.

2:45Real money. So you have to put two. Oh, really? Two vertical lines through it. Yeah. Oh, that's funny. But yes, so that you could call the Randian version because Ayn Rand took a crack at it and just made up this idea that the two lines are actually a S over a U. And someone got rid of the loopy bottom of the U and that U and S stood for United States. And that's where the double line dollar sign came from. And everybody's like, good try, Ayn Rand.

3:15Those two vertical lines going through some sort of symbol is actually pretty common among currencies. Yeah. And P.S., you just made that up. Exactly. P.S., I love you. P.S., I love you. So, like I said, there are 20 countries that use the dollar sign and how you designate it is with the abbreviation or I guess the initials for the country before, like U.S. dollar, CA for Canadian dollar, et cetera. Yeah.

3:45I think it's such a great burn that Canada adopted the dollar and abandoned the pound. Way to go, Canada.

The euro and the pound sterling

3:52Should we move on to the euro? Yes. Because that's a very, very new currency. One of the newest. Just it was the euro wasn't around until the 21st century in 2002. Yeah. Yeah. The EU had been around since 1992 when 12 European countries got together to form that body the following year. And, you know, creating a single currency was one of the things behind it. Yeah. That's a big deal.

4:23The symbol itself is it's a curvy E and then it has two horizontal lines going through it. And that's based on the Greek letter epsilon or E essentially, which is E in English. E is the first letter in Europe. You're starting to get this now. There you go. The two lines represent stability. And then very mysteriously, the euro designer has never been revealed by the EU. I suspect it's because it's an American and they hadn't looked into the person's background yet when they hired him.

4:59And I also suspect that that American is Eddie Money, which is why they hired him in the first place. But they didn't realize he was American.

5:08That's funny. He had two tickets to paradise and two strokes through a E. Yeah. He strokes it to the east. Strokes it to the west. So, like I said, that was launched in 2002. And originally there were seven banknotes and eight coins. And the banknotes are identical everywhere. But I did not know this because I haven't. I have been there since the euro, actually. But the – or have I? Yes, I have. The coins have a common design on one side and each country has their own design on the flip side.

5:41Yeah. I think that's sweet. Pretty cool. It's like, don't forget about your heritage. The U.K. was part of the EU for a long time. It was one of the founding members in 1992. And in 2020, it left. I didn't know that. Did you? Yeah, they Brexited. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. They kept the pound the entire time, though. They were like, yeah, we helped found the EU, but we're not adopting the euro. And actually, I agree with this. For good reason. The pound sterling is the oldest living continuous currency in the world.

6:14And, brother, it is old. Yeah. They're like, we're not going to flush that down the toilet for your fancy new money. Why would you? It's super old. I think 928 CE. Is that right? Yep. Well, that's when it was officially adopted by King Athelstan. Yeah. But they apparently had been in circulation even before that and accepted like the pound sterling, which I think originally was like one pound of silver equals whatever this note is worth.

6:46I don't know where you got this one, but I love this sentence, that no one's sure where the term pound sterling originated, but experts agree it has some connection to weight and silver. Yeah? Do you think so? Kind of answered it. You know what? I could have said that, too, and I'm not even a currency expert. Yeah, and of course, the pound symbol, I guess it looks sort of like if an F and an L had a baby. Oh, yeah, good one. A lowercase F. Yeah, lowercase F. Yeah, for sure.

7:16Yeah. It's really hard to do by hand, I've found. Oh, I have never tried to write that. But the L is for Libra, which is Latin for scales or balances, because, again, this has to do with weighing in silver. And the slash through it is a mystery from what I can tell. Yeah, I don't think anyone knows. No, which is good enough for me. I mean, keep it mysterious a little bit, pound sterling. Yeah, and, you know, no other nation uses the pound sterling.

7:49But there are some former British colonies who have a pound that's just not the pound sterling, like you can have a Nigerian pound. Right, or an Egyptian pound. Yeah, and it's the same symbol. But they have, again, the designation with the letter of the country. Okay. I say that we take a break and come back and talk about some other currencies around the world and their symbols. Let's do it. Hey-ho, let it go. Drop it down, let it go.

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9:21Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply. First thought is like, wow, now we're going to do all this. Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T Fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience, and Alan's master plan made it all possible. It was going to rival anything that was already built,

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10:24Connecting changes everything. AT&T. Okay, Chuck, I feel like a total schmo because I forgot to ask Yumi about this very surprising statement in this article

Japanese yen and the Indian rupee

10:46that the Japanese yen is pronounced N in Japanese. I have never heard that before. I couldn't find it anywhere else. And I meant to ask Yumi, and I failed to. So I'm sorry about that. Yeah. It seems dubious to me. Stupid. Because this came from HowStuffWorks.com, by the way. And it says that they found that people from other countries pronounced it as yen.

11:19And that's why they put the Y in there. But the only reason I say that is because there is a Y in there. It's just wrong. So I can't figure it out. No, I think there's nothing to figure out. And I'm glad I didn't ask Yumi because I think she would have looked at me like I was an idiot. Well, at any rate, the symbol for the yen is a capital Y, again, with two horizontal lines running through it, through the stem, that is. And sometimes a single horizontal line, just like the dollar and some others. And it's the same thing as the Chinese symbol for its, how would you pronounce that?

11:53The yuan. Okay. That's what I thought. Yep. But they have a different currency system, the renminbi. And the yuan is actually like a denomination of it. But everybody, including the Chinese, call it the yuan. But because they use the same symbol, there's the CN and then the Y symbol for the Chinese yuan and the JPY symbol for the Japanese yen. And this is true. If you go to Japan today, you better bring a lot of cash because there are a lot of independent, like, businesses, restaurants, that kind of thing.

12:30Especially further you get out of a city, that will be like cash only, buddy. And we don't have an ATM. I love that. I miss cash. What does Japanese cash look like? Is it cool?

12:41Do you remember? I don't remember. No. All right. I'm sorry. It's been, God, I think the last time I was there was 2013. So, you know, give me a break. Yeah. I still have some Canadian cash in my purse, by the way. Yeah? Yeah. And every time I'm at the airport, I forget to go by the old Cambio. So maybe I'll just wait until I'm back in Canada and I'll spend that, invest in my friends from the north. Two things, Chuck. I think that your bank that you have, like, a regular account with will convert that for you.

13:12I wondered about that. And, well, three things. Number two, if you do it at the airport, you're going to get completely ripped off. Yeah. Your bank will totally rip you off. Number three, I'm so glad you brought that up because Canada just announced that their new $5 bill has Terry Fox on it. Oh, no way. It's awesome looking, too. Oh, well, I'm definitely not getting rid of this cash. I'll just go trade it in for Terry Fox Fivers. There you go. So, spend some of those on some maple syrup and Montreal bagels and then pocket one just to keep forever.

13:47Very nice. And then drink a Molson Golden and then promptly vomit.

13:52All right. You want to finish up with the rupee? Yes. It also is a very, very old currency, but it hasn't been in continuous use like the pound has. But it dates back to about 2,600 years ago, which makes it even more strange that it didn't have its own symbol, like a dollar sign, until 2010, when they held the design contest. And this designer was named Professor D. Udaya Kumar, who was a professor in design, produced the winning symbol for the rupee. Yeah, prior to that, it had always just been R-S or R-E.

14:26It was denoted by letters. But how would you describe, you know, I encourage people, if it's safe to do so, to look up the symbol for the rupee. But how would you describe this? I don't think it's safe. Like, I don't think you're going to get malware or anything. No, I mean, if you're driving in a car or something. Come on. Okay, make an R, capital R. Okay. Lop the top part off. So, it's just flat. Oh, okay. And then lop the front bubble part off. And then get rid of the back stem.

14:56Okay. Now add another line. So, there's two lines. And then the bottom coming out of the R. That's essentially it. I'm going to try five or six different ways, if you'll bear with me. No. No. So, apparently it has elements from a script used to write a lot of Indian languages, Debanagara, and then also Roman and Latin scripts. And the Debanagara is ra for rupia, and the Roman letter r for the English word rupee.

15:30And those parallel lines represent the tricolored flag of India as well as the equal symbol. Booyah. You can also find rupees in Indonesia, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, among others. But they don't use that R symbol, the 2010 R rupee symbol. That's right. Chuck, I feel like that's about it. We've covered literally every single currency in the entire world. So, I think short stuff is out. It's out.

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