Re: Slang for money [was: Re: Backup Consensus?]
On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Pigeon wrote:
> OK, Just to make things more complicated British money changed around
> 1970 from 1 pound = 240 pennies from 1 pound = 100 new pennies, ie.
> the value of the pound stayed the same but the penny changed. The
> 1/240-pound sort of pennies are now called "old pennies", but of
> course they were just pennies at the time.
>
Some more wacky fun facts about British money.
The d abbreviation for penny comes from the Latin denarius which was the
standard coin of the Roman empire.
During the middle ages Britain also used the mark which was equivalent to
13s 4d (160d)
During, Victorian times there was also a coin called the florin
which was 2 shillings.
Guinea comes from the region of West africa also known as the gold coast
(modern Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone)
A pound sterling is so-called because it was originally the value of a
pound of "sterling" silver. sterling comes from Easterling which is what
German Hanseatic merchants were called during the middle ages.
--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar@debian.org>
La Salle Debain - http://www.braincells.com/debian/
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