Short Stuff: Currency Symbols

Josh Clark (0:04)

Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too, sitting in for Dave. So this is Short Stuff. And Chuck, we've talked so much about currency over the years, but we've never talked about this, and I think it's high time. This is a good pick for you.

Thank you.

Chuck Bryant (0:18)

We're talking about currency symbols and what they mean and where they came from. And we'll start with the dollar. We're looking at you, United States, and Canada, and Namibia, and New Zealand, and 17 other countries that use the dollar.

It comes from the Spanish peso, apparently, which has been around since the 15th century. The peso de ocho, or pieces of eight.

Josh Clark (0:37)

Did not know that.

Chuck Bryant (0:38)

And the eventual United States would model their dollar after the peso.

Josh Clark (0:44)

Did not know that either. And in fact, Chuck, they think that the dollar sign came from people abbreviating the word peso.

They would say PS, and somebody eventually was like, you know what, I can really save some space. If I wrote the S over the P, someone else came along and said, you know what, we could save even more space if we got rid of the round part of the P. And someone else said, oh my God, you guys just created a dollar sign.

Chuck Bryant (1:11)

That's right. That first appeared in print as the dollar sign after 1800

And there are three iterations. I guess the first PS was the first one. The single stroke through the S was the second one. And then, as all elementary school children know and love, the double vertical lines through the S is yet another version.

Josh Clark (1:36)

I've never really thought it out loud, but I've always thought of that as meaning like, now you're talking real money, so you have to put two vertical lines through it.

Chuck Bryant (1:44)

Oh, that's funny.

Josh Clark (1:45)

But yes, so that you could call the Randian version, because Ayn Rand took a crack at it and just made up this idea that the two lines are actually S over a U, and someone got rid of the loopy bottom of the U, and that U and S stood for United States, and that's where the double line dollar sign came from. And everybody's like, good try, Ayn Rand. Those two vertical lines going through some sort of symbol is actually pretty common among currencies.

Chuck Bryant (2:17)

Yeah, and PS., you just made that up.

Josh Clark (2:21)

Exactly. PS., I love you.

Chuck Bryant (2:24)

PS., I love you. So, like I said, there are 20 countries that use the dollar sign, and how you designate it is with the abbreviation, or I guess the initials for the country before, like US dollar, CA for Canadian dollar, etc.

Josh Clark (2:39)

Yeah. I think that's such a great burn that Canada adopted the dollar and abandoned the pound. Way to go, Canada.

Chuck Bryant (2:48)

Should we move on to the euro?

Josh Clark (2:49)

Yes, because that's a very, very new currency, one of the newest. It was the, the euro wasn't around until the 21st century in 2002

Chuck Bryant (3:01)

Yeah. Yeah, the EU had been around since 1992, when 12 European countries got together to form that body the following year.

And, you know, creating a single currency was one of the things behind it.

Josh Clark (3:17)

Yeah, it was a big deal.

The symbol itself is, it's a curvy E, and then it has two horizontal lines going through it. And that's based on the Greek letter Epsilon, or E essentially, which is E in English. E is the first letter in Europe. You're starting to get this now. There you go. The two lines represent stability. And then very mysteriously, the Euro designer has never been revealed by the EU.

I suspect it's because it's an American, and they hadn't looked into the person's background yet when they hired him. And I also suspect that that American is Eddie Money, which is why they hired him in the first place, but they didn't realize he was American.

Chuck Bryant (4:04)

That's funny. He had two tickets to Paradise and two strokes through a E.

Josh Clark (4:09)

Yeah, and strokes into the east, strokes into the west.

Chuck Bryant (4:12)

So, like I said, that was launched in 2002, and originally there were seven banknotes and eight coins. And the banknotes are identical everywhere, but I did not know this because I haven't, I have been there since the Euro, actually, but the, or have I? Yes, I have.