Dollar is the name of more than 25 currencies and their base units. The United States dollar, named after the international currency known as the Spanish dollar, was established in 1792 and is the first so named that still survives. Others include the Australian dollar, Brunei dollar, Canadian dollar, Eastern Caribbean dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Jamaican dollar, Liberian dollar, Namibian dollar, New Taiwan dollar, New Zealand dollar, Singapore dollar, Trinidad and Tobago dollar, and several others. The symbol for most of those currencies is the dollar sign $; the same symbol is used by many countries using peso currencies.
The name 'dollar' originates from the thaler, which was the name of a silver coin called the minted in 1519 in the western part of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). The word itself comes from the German word , i.e. 'valley'.
Economies that use a "dollar" Country or territory ISO 4217 code Currency Established Preceding currency XCD Eastern Caribbean dollar 1965 British West Indies dollar and its territories AUD Australian dollar 1966 Australian pound 1910–1966 Pound sterling 1825–1910 BSD Bahamian dollar 1966 Bahamian pound BBD Barbadian dollar 1972 Eastern Caribbean dollar BZD Belize dollar 1973 British Honduran dollar BMD Bermudian dollar 1970 Pound sterling BND(SGD) Brunei dollar (Alongside the Singapore dollar) 1967 Malaya and British Borneo dollar CAD Canadian dollar 1858 Spanish dollar pre-1841 Canadian pound 1841–1858 Newfoundland dollar 1865–1949 in the Dominion of Newfoundland KYD Cayman Islands dollar 1972 Jamaican dollar XCD Eastern Caribbean dollar 1965 British West Indies dollar FJD Fijian dollar 1969 Fijian pound XCD Eastern Caribbean dollar 1965 British West Indies dollar GYD Guyanese dollar 1839 Eastern Caribbean dollar HKD Hong Kong dollar 1863 Rupee, Real (Spanish/Colonial Spain: Mexican), Chinese cash JMD Jamaican dollar 1969 Jamaican pound KID / AUD Kiribati dollar along with the Australian dollar 1979 Australian dollar LRD Liberian dollar 1937 United States dollar NAD/ZAR Namibian dollar along with the South African rand 1993 South African rand AUD Australian dollar and its territories and dependencies NZD New Zealand dollar 1967 New Zealand pound XCD Eastern Caribbean dollar1965 XCD Eastern Caribbean dollar XCD Eastern Caribbean dollar SGD(BND) Singapore dollar(Alongside the Brunei dollar) 1967 Malaya and British Borneo dollar SBD Solomon Islands dollar 1977 Australian pound SRD Surinamese dollar 2004 Surinamese guilder TWD New Taiwan dollar 1949 Old Taiwan dollar TTD Trinidad and Tobago dollar 1964 British West Indies dollar TVD / AUD Tuvaluan dollar along with the Australian dollar 1976 and its territories USD United States dollar 1792 Spanish dollarColonial scrip
Other countries that use the United States dollar Country or territory Established Preceding currency 2002 Indonesian rupiah 2001 Ecuadorian sucre 2001 Salvadoran colón
Other territories that use a dollar Territory Currency Eastern Caribbean dollar (Netherlands) US dollar US dollar (alongside the pound sterling) US dollar Eastern Caribbean dollar (Netherlands) US dollar (France) Canadian dollar (alongside the euro) (Netherlands) US dollar US dollar
Countries unofficially accepting "dollars"
CountryCurrency US dollar Hong Kong dollar US dollar Although called Panamanian balboas, US dollars circulate as official currency, since there are no Balboa bills, only coins that are the same size, weight and value as their US counterparts.
Countries and regions that have previously used a "dollar" currency
+ Country Introduction Withdrawal Notes 1861 1865 The Confederate States dollar issued from March 1861 to 1865. 1945 1976 The name Ethiopian dollar was used in the English text on the banknotes. It was divided into 100 santims (derived from the French centime). Birr became the official name, used in all languages, in 1976. 1967 1975 On 12 June 1967, the Malaysian dollar, issued by the new central bank, Central Bank of Malaysia, replaced the Malaya and British Borneo dollar. The Malaysian Ringgit name was introduced in 1975. 1791 1805 The Sierra Leonean dollar was used from 1791 to 1805. It was subdivided into 100 cents and was issued by the Sierra Leone Company. The dollar was pegged to sterling at a rate of 1 dollar = 4 shillings 2 pence. 1497 1868 The Spanish dollar was used from 1497 to 1868. 1815 1828 The Ceylonese rixdollar was a currency used in British Ceylon in the early 19th Century. 1970 1980 the Rhodesian dollar replaced the Rhodesian pound in 1970 and it was used until Zimbabwe came into being in 1980. 1839 1840 The Texas dollar was issued between January 1839 and September 1840. 1980 2009 The Zimbabwean dollar was the name of four official currencies of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 12 April 2009. During this time, it was subject to periods of extreme inflation, followed by a period of hyperinflation. Another Zimbabwean dollar was in use from 2019 to 2024. 2019 2024
History Etymology On 15 January 1520, the Kingdom of Bohemia began minting coins from silver mined locally in Joachimsthal and marked on reverse with the Bohemian lion. The coins were named Joachimsthaler after the town, becoming shortened in common usage to thaler or taler. The town's name is derived from Saint Joachim, coupled with the German word Thal (Tal in modern spelling), which means 'valley' (cf. the English term dale); the coin is thus "from the valley of [St] Joachim".Welcome to Jáchymov: the Czech town that invented the dollar. The tiny town of Jáchymov was just named one of Unesco's newest World Heritage sites Five hundred years after coining the first dollar, a tiny mining town is coming to grips with the many ways it shaped the modern world. bbc.com.
This name found its way into other languages, for example:
German — Thaler (or Taler) Czech, Slovak and Slovene — tolar Slovak — toliar Croatian — talir Polish — talar Low German — daler Dutch — rijksdaalder (or daler) Danish and Norwegian — rigsdaler Latvian — dālderis Swedish — riksdaler Spanish — dólar (or real de a ocho or peso duro) Hungarian — tallér Ethiopian — talari (ታላሪ) English — dollar
In contrast to other languages which adopted the second part of word joachimsthaler, the first part found its way into Russian language and became , (ефимок).
The predecessor of the Joachimsthaler was the Guldengroschen or Guldiner which was a large silver coin originally minted in Tirol in 1486 and introduced into the Duchy of Saxony in 1500. The King of Bohemia wanted a similar silver coin, which became the Joachimsthaler.
Europe and colonial North America
The Joachimsthaler of the 16th century was succeeded by the longer-lived Reichsthaler of the Holy Roman Empire, used from the 16th to 19th centuries. The Netherlands also introduced its own dollars in the 16th century: the Burgundian Cross Thaler (Bourgondische Kruisdaalder), the German-inspired Rijksdaalder, and the Dutch lion dollar (leeuwendaalder). The latter coin was used for Dutch trade in the Middle East, in the Dutch East Indies and West Indies, and in the Thirteen Colonies of North America.
For the English North American colonists, however, the Spanish peso or "piece of eight" had always held first place, and this coin was also called the "dollar" as early as 1581. Spanish dollars or "pieces of eight" were distributed widely in the Spanish colonies in the New World and in the Philippines.National Geographic. June 2002. p. 1. Ask Us.
Origins of the dollar sign
The sign is first attested in business correspondence in the 1770s as a scribal abbreviation "ps", referring to the Spanish American peso,Lawrence Kinnaird (July 1976). "The Western Fringe of Revolution," The Western Historical Quarterly 7(3), 259. , that is, the "Spanish dollar" as it was known in British North America. These late 18th- and early 19th-century manuscripts show that the s gradually came to be written over the p developing a close equivalent to the "$" mark, and this new symbol was retained to refer to the American dollar as well, once this currency was adopted in 1785 by the United States.Florian Cajori (1993). A History of Mathematical Notations (Vol. 2), 15-29.Arthur S. Aiton and Benjamin W. Wheeler (May 1931). "The First American Mint", The Hispanic American Historical Review 11(2), 198 and note 2 on 198. ,Riesco Terrero, Ángel (1983). Diccionario de abreviaturas hispanas de los siglos XIII al XVIII: Con un apendice de expresiones y formulas juridico-diplomaticas de uso corriente. Salamanca: Imprenta Varona, 350.
Adoption by the United States
By the time of the American Revolution, the Spanish dólar gained significance because they backed paper money authorized by the individual colonies and the Continental Congress. Because Britain deliberately withheld hard currency from the American colonies, virtually all the non-token coinage in circulation was Spanish (and to a much lesser extent French and Dutch) silver, obtained via illegal but widespread commerce with the West Indies. Common in the Thirteen Colonies, Spanish dólar were even legal tender in one colony, Virginia.
On 2 April 1792, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton reported to Congress the precise amount of silver found in Spanish dollar coins in common use in the states. As a result, the United States dollar was definedAct of April 2, A.D. 1792 of the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, Section 9. as a unit of pure silver weighing 371 4/16th grains (24.057 grams), or 416 grains of standard silver (standard silver being defined as 371.25/416 in silver, and balance in alloy).Section 13 of the Act. It was specified that the "money of account" of the United States should be expressed in those same "dollars" or parts thereof. Additionally, all lesser-denomination coins were defined as percentages of the dollar coin, such that a half-dollar was to contain half as much silver as a dollar, quarter-dollars would contain one-fourth as much, and so on.
In an act passed in January 1837, the dollar's weight was reduced to 412.5 grains and alloy at 90% silver, resulting in the same fine silver content of 371.25 grains. On 21 February 1853, the quantity of silver in the lesser coins was reduced, with the effect that their denominations no longer represented their silver content relative to dollar coins.
Various acts have subsequently been passed affecting the amount and type of metal in U.S. coins, so that today there is no legal definition of the term "dollar" to be found in U.S. statute. Currently the closest thing to a definition is found in United States Code Title 31, Section 5116, paragraph b, subsection 2: "The Secretary [of the Treasury] shall sell silver under conditions the Secretary considers appropriate for at least $1.292929292 a fine troy ounce."
Silver was mostly removed from U.S. coinage by 1965 and the dollar became a free-floating fiat money without a commodity backing defined in terms of real gold or silver. The United States Mint continues to make silver $1-denomination coins, but these are not intended for general circulation.
Usage in the United Kingdom There are two quotes in the plays of William Shakespeare referring to dollars as money. Coins known as "thistle dollars" were in use in Scotland during the 16th and 17th centuries, and use of the English word, and perhaps even the use of the coin, may have begun at the University of St Andrews. This might be supported by a reference to the sum of "ten thousand dollars" in Macbeth (act I, scene II) (an anachronism because the real Macbeth, upon whom the play was based, lived in the 11th century). In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Man with the Twisted Lip" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1891, an Englishman posing as a London beggar describes the shillings and pounds he collected as dollars: