🚀 go-pugleaf

Many currency symbols, especially those with a long history, are composed
of an alphabetic with some decoration, which in many cases has degenerated
into a stroke or two (rather like mathematicians' symbols for The Natural
Numbers, The Reals, etc).

For example, the English pound is written as an L (usually a curly one)
with a stroke through it.  "L" because the old Norman word for it was
"livre", derived from the same Latin root (librus?) as the Italian "lire".

"$" is used in other countries which call their currency units "dollars"; I
believe the Spanish conquistadores were responsible for spreading this
convention.  I would conjecture that the "S" which forms the basis of it
comes from the Latin "solidus"; like the pound/livre, the name changed at
some point but the symbol remained the same.

Why do I guess 'solidus'? In my earlier years, Britain had a peculiar
multiple-radix system of reckoning money in which the units were pounds,
shillings and pence, of which an instance is L1/12s/3d: L for libri, s for
solidi, and d for denarii, the old Latin names which were adopted for the
units in the middle ages.

Alan Wills
University of Manchester
-- 
Alan Wills
+44-61-273 7121 x5699