🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3a49d093.1311264187@news.spiretech.com>, xxx@example.com (John
Jordan) wrote:

>Alt <alt@card.kyiv.net> dijo a todos por la internet:
>
>>All I know that
>>"Dollar" starts from Nederland's (Dutch) "Daller".
>>But it does not explain why Dollar is "S".
>>By the way, why Pound is "L"
>>"Pound", as my friend told me, starts from "pound of Sterlings"
>>Sterlings was a Danish money, when England became dependent by
>>DenMark they was sending them "pounds of sterlings" like tax.
>>May be "ster-" means dobled line, and "-ling" is the letter "L".

I must say it is _impressive_ how much nonsense people can post to Usenet.

>No, the L for pound has nothing to do with sterling. It stands for
>"libra," the Latin word for "pound." The slash through it was added to
>distinguish it from an ordinary capital L. 

That's right. But the money _has_ something to do with "sterling", though.

As for "sterling": dictionary.com says about "sterling silver":
"1.An alloy of 92.5 percent silver with copper or another metal. 
2.Objects made of this alloy. "

And at http://thesilvercastle.com/silver.htm we find:
"In the 1300�s, King Edward I, in order to ensure their quality, ordered
that all silver coins be stamped with a number indicating its silver
content and the name of the city where it was made. This custom of
stamping jewelry was adopted throughout the world and is still in practice
today. If you look closely at your silver, you will notice the numbers
.925 and the country where it was made stamped into it. This is a good way
to determine the authenticity of your jewelry."

So it is reasonable to conclude that "pounds sterling" (not "pounds of
sterlings") means literally pounds of sterling (92.5% pure) silver.

>Still wish I knew where the dollar sign came from. Maybe it really did
>come from U with S stuck on top.

See my other post.

I'm astonished that in this time and age, where the WWW provides everyone
with nearly instant access to a virtually infinite wealth of information
that can be easily checked and doublechecked for correctness and
credibility, people still manage to post their uninformed, but incredible,
beliefs without bothering to do at least a minimum of checking first. I
wonder whether this is because of ignorance or because of malice, but I
don't know which would be worse.

-Lasse