"Dolar" redirects here. For the Slovenian philosopher, see Mladen Dolar. For the municipality in Spain, see Dolar.
For other uses, see Dollar (disambiguation).
A United States two-dollar bill. Rarely seen in circulation, but still legal tender.
The dollar (often represented by the dollar sign $) is the name of the official currency or a banknote of many countries, territories and dependencies, including Australia, Belize, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United States.
History
The word dollar is an Anglicised form of "thaler", (pronounced taler, with a long "a"), the name given to coins first minted in 1519 from locally mined silver in Thal later named Joachimsthal in Bohemia. (Today the town of Joachimsthal lies within the borders of the Czech republic and its Czech name is Jachymov). Thaler is a shortened form of the term by which the coin was originally known - Joachimsthaler.
Later on the English version of the name (dollar) was also applied to similar coins, not only ones minted in central Europe but also the Spanish peso and the Portuguese eight-real piece. Both these large silver coins were practically identical in weight and fineness. Today we are familiar with the phrase pieces of eight from tales of pirates in the Caribbean.
[edit]Etymology
On 15 January 1520, the Bohemian Count Hieronymus Schlick (Czech: Jeronym Slik z Passounu) began minting coins known as Joachimsthaler, named for Joachimsthal (modern Jachymov in the Czech Republic), where the silver was mined.[1] (In German, thal or tal refers to a valley or dale.) "Joachimsthaler" was later shortened in common usage to taler or thaler (same pronunciation) and this shortened word eventually found its way into other languages: Hungarian taller, Czech tolar, Danish and Norwegian (rigs)daler, Swedish (riks)daler, Icelandic dalur, Dutch (rijks)daalder, Ethiopian ??? ("talari"), Italian tallero, Flemish daelder, Polish Talar, Persian Dare, as well as into English as dollar.[1]
