
Why Is the Dollar Sign a Letter S? - shovel
http://observationdeck.io9.com/why-is-the-dollar-sign-a-letter-s-1683940575
======
elpachuco
It is really annoying to hear so many opinions here choosing to believe an
alternate version simply because it sounds better to them rather than because
of any actual evidence. (Are we still in Hacker News or is it a Sunday thing?)
It feels like I'm reading opinions by creationists.

Even the us government agrees that the $ symbol is a peso sign. [1]

Here is the relevant piece:

>>What is the origin of the $ sign? The origin of the "$" sign has been
variously accounted for, however, the most widely accepted explanation is that
the symbol is the result of evolution, independently in different places, of
the Mexican or Spanish "P's" for pesos, or piastres, or pieces of eight. The
theory, derived from a study of old manuscripts, is that the "S" gradually
came to be written over the "P," developing a close equivalent of the "$"
mark. It was widely used before the adoption of the United States dollar in
1785.<<

[1]
[http://www.moneyfactory.gov/faqlibrary.html](http://www.moneyfactory.gov/faqlibrary.html)

~~~
palmer_eldritch
> It feels like I'm reading opinions by creationists.

> the most widely accepted explanation is that the symbol is the result of
> evolution

Well, maybe you are...

------
JimboOmega
What I'd like to know more is why it goes before the quantity and not after.

Nobody writes "it weighs lb. 10" or "it's m 20 long". Or even "I had %20 of
it".

Subconsciously I always read "$10" as "dollar ten". It drives me a little
crazy.

~~~
DanBC
Especially since in American you'd write 10c, and not c10.

There's a stack exchange comment saying it's harder to forge $20 to $320 than
it is to forge 20$ to 320$.

[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11326/what-is-
the...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11326/what-is-the-
difference-between-20-and-20)

[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/34013/why-is-
the-...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/34013/why-is-the-unit-of-
measure-placed-before-the-value-for-currencies-are-there-oth)

I'd like to know why we do it too. I mean, I know "just because" but I'd like
to know how it started.

~~~
jmccree
From a quick google image search, it appears that at least some EU checks also
follow the format of putting the currency symbol before the numerical amount.
It makes sense on the face of things that $200.00 is harder to alter than
200.00$ .

~~~
kleiba
_that $200.00 is harder to alter_

Luckily, though, it is common to use commas to separate groups of three
digits: $200,000.00 But this means a change of a factor 1000 which might be
less useful than the original 20$ -> 320$ example.

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
That depends on locale other countrys do not use commas as separators in the
same way

------
mkagenius
How interesting. 'Paisa' used in India as currency also sounds like peso,
however, seems to have different origin:

"""The word paisa is from Hindi & Urdu paisā, a quarter-anna coin, ultimately
from Sanskrit term padāṁśa meaning 'quarter part', from pada "foot or quarter"
and aṁśa "part".""" \-
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisa)

~~~
burrox
It's also how we denote the people of a certain region in Colombia. I don't
think it's related though.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisa_Region](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisa_Region)

------
johnzim
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_sign](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_sign)

~~~
gweinberg
Then wikipedia article is better.

Personally, I find the US answer more plausible. because of the existence of
the two bar version. It's much more likely for people to simplify the two bar
version by dropping a bar than to pointlessly complicate the symbol by adding
an extra bar for no reason, so I suspect the two bar version was the original.

~~~
clay_to_n
In the comments section of the article, someone claimed that in their Spanish-
speaking country $ was used to refer to pesos, but with two bars it meant USD.
So maybe the two bars in the USD was introduced to separate it from the peso
when they were both common currencies.

~~~
gweinberg
That makes sense.

------
masswerk
There are some alternative theories on this, too. The one I learned was the
sign being derived from the Pillars of Hercules (two vertical bars) with a
banner (the "S") wrapped around it, reading "[non] plus ultra", as adopted by
Charles V for the Spanish coat of arms and later stamped on the reverse of
Spanish dollar coins.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Columnas_Plus_Ultra.png](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Columnas_Plus_Ultra.png)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar)

[Edit:] There's actually a bit of irony in this, considering the Pillars of
Hercules were marking the end of the world (as lined out by the banner "non
plus ultra") and the minted silver coming from the New World beyond ...

~~~
blumkvist
From the article's comment section:

It is not the case, I'm sorry to say, although that is certainly a commonly-
repeated story. (There's a similar urban legend in Brazil involving the
Pillars of Heracles and the meandering route used by Tariq ibn Ziyad.) But the
textual evidence (years and years of preserved handwritten merchant
communications from multiple nations and colonies on both sides of the
Atlantic showing a clear progression from PS to a $) is very much in favor of
the superimposed PS.

~~~
masswerk
Personally, I would think there's some kind of inheritance from the older Lira
(later pound) sign "£". Remarkably, this one is also coming in two variants,
both with a single and a (probably older) double stroke. (Unicode U+00A3 and
U+00A4 respectively.) A letter with a horizontal or vertical stroke became
somewhat of a universal signature of a currency symbol (think of cents, Yen,
&c).

The stroke-signature actually goes back in history as far as to the antique
Roman symbols for As and Denarius. (A nice overview of currency symbols may be
found at
[http://www.signographie.de/cms/upload/pdf/SIGNA_GewWaehrZch_...](http://www.signographie.de/cms/upload/pdf/SIGNA_GewWaehrZch_1.2.pdf)
[German].)

[Edit:] Also, consider the former predominance of the version featuring two
distinctive vertical strokes, as lined out in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9018366](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9018366)
. A "P" with a doubled vertical stroke would just make a (mirrored) paragraph
sign. But I confess not to know, what the original version would have been
(single or double stroke).

[Edit:] Another hint on "$" not being derived from the letter "S" might be the
significant smaller vertical extent of the "S"-like part than the ones of
capital letters, both raised from the baseline and smaller than the X-height.

~~~
lamuerteflaca
Nope, you are wrong. Is a peso sign.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_sign](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_sign)

~~~
acqq
Specifically, the US dollar exists only since 1785 and the sign $ was already
used before for Peso according to Prof. Cajori who examined the West Indian
manuscripts dated 1760 to 1778
[http://books.google.at/books?id=4ykDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontc...](http://books.google.at/books?id=4ykDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)

~~~
wyck
Here is a $ sign from pre 1700 Spanish coin
[http://www.ancientresource.com/lots/shipwreck-pirate-
coins.h...](http://www.ancientresource.com/lots/shipwreck-pirate-coins.html) (
#CS20730 ). There are more of these that pre date that, so this article is
fairly opinionated.

~~~
acqq
And here's the sample of what Prof Cajori presented, a letter from 1778 (that
is 7 years before the US dollar was introduced by The Grand Committee of the
Continental Congress:
[http://www.usmint.gov/education/historianscorner/?action=tim...](http://www.usmint.gov/education/historianscorner/?action=timeline)).

[http://s23.postimg.org/p1tie5297/peso_as_dollar.png](http://s23.postimg.org/p1tie5297/peso_as_dollar.png)

Thanks to nemo:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9019062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9019062)

------
iamwil
Hrm. At one point on the internets, I read that it was just the letters 'U'
and 'S' (for United States) overlaid on top of each other. And over time, we
lost the round pipe at the bottom, and one of the lines.

It seemed like a plausible story, and because I wasn't doing hardcore
research, I didn't look into it further. Now, I always wonder if some fun fact
I have in my head is actually true or not.

Reminds me of that quote about Abe Lincoln and the internet.

~~~
arvinjoar
This is what I believed as well, and the theory is actually included on the
Wikipedia page, but only for the double-stroke dollar sign[1].

I read Atlas Shrugged as a teenager and that's where I got it from.

[1] =
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_sign#From_.22U.S..22](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_sign#From_.22U.S..22)

~~~
javert
This theory is a "fact" in the fictional world of Atlas Shrugged, but the
author (Rand) ackowledged that in the real world, it is not known to be true.

------
bikamonki
@ has a well known meaning in Spanish, it is the symbol of "arroba" which is
an old unit of weight, like a pound, ounce, etc. I still remember hearing on
the local markets sellers pricing their goods for its arroba weight. In fact,
when we read an email out load we do not say someone at somwhere dot com, we
say someone arroba somewhere dot com.

~~~
kragen
It was commonly used in English in commercial correspondence, such as
invoices, to separate a quantity from the unit price. I don't remember the
exact notation, but it was something like 20#@$10 for "20 pounds at 10 dollars
per pound." or "20@$10" for "20 items at 10 dollars each".

Anybody who can dig up an English-language B2B invoice from the 1950s or
earlier?

------
gshrikant
The evolution of the £ (pound) symbol has a similar, fascinating history
behind it too. It was recently discussed on a 99% Invisible podcast [1].

[1]
[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/octothorpe/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/octothorpe/)

~~~
_ak
Whenever I think about it, I find it quite fascinating that a pound literally
used to be a pound of silver. Another aspect is the age of the Lsd system, and
how long it was held onto.

------
blahedo
I've heard this etymology before, but the article would be a lot more
convincing if it showed an actual in-the-wild example of the "intermediate
form" of the symbol, with the P and S exactly superimposed on each other...

~~~
nemo
Florian Cajori's A History of Mathematical Notations goes into the history and
notes examples of old written manuscripts showing the intermediate form in
use, with one example where both were used interchangeably in a letter. He
examined the question in depth, showed that the earliest uses in the US had a
single stroke, with the double stroke only coming later, and dealt with the
other theories showing as conclusively as possible that it's a peso sign
composed of a superimposed P/S. It's an old book, and not on a web site, but
you could probably find a copy at a library.

~~~
acqq
Here's the link to the book you refer to (two volumes in one, the second
volume starts at p. 469). I can't see where it writes about the dollar sign,
can you help me?

[http://monoskop.org/images/2/21/Cajori_Florian_A_History_of_...](http://monoskop.org/images/2/21/Cajori_Florian_A_History_of_Mathematical_Notations_2_Vols.pdf)

Edit: thanks Nemo!

~~~
nemo
It starts on p. 15 of volume II, around 2/3s of the way into the pdf.

------
dmsinger
Until keyboards were everywhere (which was a while ago, yes), I wasn't used to
seeing the $ with a single vertical line in a money context. Myth or not, it
made the interlocking U S very believable. It just makes me wonder which came
first, and how the double line came about, if it wasn't there originally.

------
mjklin
NB: In all Spanish-speaking countries that I know of, you can call the
currency "peso" even if that's not its official name. In Costa Rica, for
example, they will often say "cien pesos" rather than "cien colones" if
they're in an informal situation or mood.

------
d13
"Alternatively, the $ symbol derives from the scroll on the pillar, on the
reverse of the "pillar dollar" variety of pieces of eight [Spanish Dollars]."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar#mediaviewer/File...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar#mediaviewer/File:Philip_V_Coin.jpg)

Which you can clearly see here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar#mediaviewer/File...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar#mediaviewer/File:Philip_V_Coin.jpg)

------
lucio
The S and the pillars story seems simpler, and also accounts for the $ with
two vertical bars.

Here in Argentina, we still call money: "silver", as in "Do you have silver to
pay for that?"

It was called "peso"(weight) because you used to WEIGH your money instead of
"counting" it.

It is funny that we still call it "silver" and "weight" nowadays when fiat-
money is everywhere.

~~~
ascotan
Even thought wikipedia clearly calls the spanish dollar a 'piece of eight',
it's pretty clear that peso means 'weight' and the dollar has about 8x the
weight in silver of a spanish real. It's probably better to call it a 'weight
of eight'. [http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinText/Sp-
milled.2.html](http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinText/Sp-milled.2.html)

------
msaravanan
That's interesting. Where I live (India), we didn't have a currency symbol
until recently. Our currency is the Indian Rupee and we used to prefix "Rs."
and "Re." to the value.

The govt. invited people from around the country to send in their designs and
we finally chose one (20B9 on unicode). But it took us 2 years to start using
the symbol on currency notes.

------
wyck
Here is a $ sign from pre 1700 Spanish coin
[http://www.ancientresource.com/lots/shipwreck-pirate-
coins.h...](http://www.ancientresource.com/lots/shipwreck-pirate-coins.html) (
#CS20730 ). There are more of these that pre date that, so this article is
fairly opinionated.

~~~
elpachuco
Although it looks like the Peso sign I'm not sure it really is. Why would you
put the Peso sign in a coin. It probably is something else and du to wear and
tear now it looks like a Peso sign. Look at this other coin for example:

[http://www.ancientresource.com/images/pirate-shipwreck-
treas...](http://www.ancientresource.com/images/pirate-shipwreck-
treasure/spanish-copper-coins/spanish-copper-cs2074.jpg)

ps: The link to the image you are talking about is:

[http://www.ancientresource.com/images/pirate-shipwreck-
treas...](http://www.ancientresource.com/images/pirate-shipwreck-
treasure/spanish-copper-coins/spanish-copper-cs2067.jpg)

And its correct id is:#CS2073

------
kijin
Fun trivia: When Americans went to East Asia with their funny money, the
Asians quickly replaced the $ sign with a similar-looking local character: 弗.

Nowadays in Japan and Korea, you often see headlines like "1兆弗" (1 trillion
U.S. dollars).

But 弗 originally means "not". So American money is not real money ;)

~~~
cheapsteak
I've never seen 弗 in use in Chinese newspapers to refer to dollars. Any
sources on this? Baidu-ing "兆弗" is only turning up results for a Shanghai
company called "兆弗"

~~~
kijin
Sorry, here's an errata: The letter 弗 is commonly used in Korea and Japan. In
China, the U.S. dollar is usually written as 美元 ("American yuan", but since
both the dollar and the yuan derive from the thaler as the article says, it
can mean "American thaler" as well).

------
JoeAltmaier
And I remember than 'ampersand' is 'and per se and' from the alphabet song,
where the 'and' sign used to be included at the end. Its been corrupted to the
'ampersand'. Any idea if there's any history behind that?

------
jstalin
It's fascinating to understand that originally there was no "official" US
currency, only that the Spanish dollar was circulating as a sort of
international currency. The US dollar was then defined a unit of weight of
either gold or silver and not some floating, independent notion of value.
Anyone could bring a quantity of gold or silver into the mint and have it
turned into a dollar coin. Of course, that original notion has been inflated
away and the dollar has lost some 99% of its value.

One of my favorite sites for seeing the effect of debasement is
[http://www.coinflation.com/](http://www.coinflation.com/).

~~~
ajross
I've read this post over several times and for the life of me it seems that
you believe the existence of a fiat currency is... a bad thing?

~~~
jstalin
Yes, I've become fairly certain that fiat currency is indeed a bad thing.

~~~
sjwright
Whereas I've become fairly certain that fiat currency is the only viable
option.

------
fnl
Tyrol never was German (except when anexed by the Nazis, that is...). At most,
it was part of the Ostrogothic kingdom (up to 550 or so); After, it was its
own county, ruled by counts apointed by the Holy Roman Emperor, and then
(1369, with the death of the last countess, Magarete Maultasch) it became part
of the Kingdom of Austria that was being built by the house Habsburg. So by
the time the silver mentioned in the article was found, Tyrol was firmly in
Habsburg hands, and ever since has been part of Austria (particularly, the
region with the silver).

Disclaimer: I am Tyrolean... :)

------
smegel
> And because the US dollar was named after the Spanish peso de ocho "dollar"
> coin

I am still not sure where the word "dollar" comes from though. If we are using
the sign for pesos, who not use the word "pesos" instead of "dollar"?

~~~
ddebernardy
Dollar comes from daler/taler:

[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dollar](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dollar)

No idea why the pesos sign became the dollar sign, but I'd image it may have
something to do with the Spaniards being around long before the English in the
Americas.

~~~
elpachuco
>>No idea why the pesos sign became the dollar sign, but I'd image it may have
something to do with the Spaniards being around long before the English in the
Americas

That is the whole point of this article . It tells you where the sign came
from.

------
juiced
Turns out that the Dollar (0.88 Euro), derived from the Dutch word Daalder,
today has the exact same value as this Daalder (2.50 guilders) before it
became the Euro (2.20371 guilders), after calculating the inflation rate.

------
CanadaKaz
There are many different explanations floating around. The one I like the most
is that it is actually US and that U is placed on top of the S. That's why
there are often two vertical lines.

~~~
lamuerteflaca
Isn't it better to prefer the one with the most evidence supporting it?

~~~
pluma
That sounds far too reasonable.

My preferred explanation is that the dollar sign looks like that because the
dollar sign creating pixies created it that way.

(all hail the dollar sign creating pixies)

------
agumonkey
The history of human communication is wonderfully absurd. So much cryptic
conflation (vocal or scriptural).

------
205guy
Ugh, pop-journalism. Did anyone even wonder where the word Joachimthal came
from that gave the dollar it's name? From my rudimentary German, I would guess
[Saint] Joachim valley, in other words the location of the silver mine.

------
barrystaes
Isn't it "Dollar" because of the dutch "Daalder"?

------
chucksmart
i thought $ was a snake on a stick.

~~~
chucksmart
"Another theory is that the dollar sign may have also originated from Hermes,
the Greek god of bankers, thieves, messengers, and tricksters. One of his
symbols was the caduceus, a staff from which ribbons or snakes dangled in a
sinuous curve." Thanks for the downvotes.

------
ajcarpy2005
It may have evolved from the Kadusis symbol which is also used on medical
stuff sometimes.

------
ilaksh
That's just the nice version that goes around. It actually represents devices
like manacles. Used for counting slaves.

Our civilization is still based on a type of wage-based slavery.

The euro symbol is another example.

