MicroFactzzz#0139 · 💰 Money Is Weird
The word "dollar" comes from a tiny Czech town, not from America
The word "dollar" traces back to the "Joachimsthaler" — a silver coin minted in the 16th century in Jáchymov, in what is now the Czech Republic.
In 1520, rich silver deposits were discovered in the town of Jáchymov (German name: Joachimsthal), in what is now the Czech Republic, and coins minted from it became known as "Joachimsthalers" — named after the valley ("Thal" in German) where the town sat.
The name eventually shortened to "thaler" and spread across Europe in that form as the term for a large silver coin — used, in slightly different phonetic forms, in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and the German-speaking lands.
The twist: when American colonists in the 18th century went looking for a name for their own currency, they reached for that same corrupted "thaler" — which in English pronunciation came out sounding like "dollar," officially adopted by the US Congress in 1785.
The stakes: the most American symbol of money in the world has, at its root, nothing to do with America at all — it's a linguistic souvenir from a small mining valley in Central Europe that almost nobody remembers today.
Sources
- General knowledge / encyclopedic sources
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