The Dollar Sign

SPECULATIONS ON THE PALEOGRAPHIC ORIGIN OF THE DOLLAR SIGN

The word "dollar" curiously appears in Shakespeare's Macbeth (Act I, Scene 2) and The Tempest (Act II, Scene 1) long before the English established the Massachusetts colony and before the dollar was adopted as our national currency. The word is a cognate of the German "thaler," the name given to crown-size silver piece first issued in 1454 Bohemia, coming into English through the Low German "daler." Shakespeare was apparently using the word "dollar" as a pun on "dolour" (pain, trouble). The use of the word "dollar" is curious because the crown had been issued in England since 1551, but the word in Shakespeare's time apparently refers to foreign coins of the same size, much the same as we use the word "crown" to refer to any silver dollar-sized foreign coin (eg, "crowns of the world").

The origin of the dollar sign, however, is still shrouded in academic controversy. When showing off my collection of foreign coins that circulated in the American colonies, I point out that the banner wrapped around the column on the Spanish pillar dollar resembles the dollar sign. This symbol, however, more likely has its origins in the style of handwriting in colonial times as a study in English paleography suggests. The Spanish dollar, being divided into 8 reales (hence "piece of eight"), was often written as the numeral 8 between two vertical lines or oblique lines (the virgule) like so: /8/ Four bits was represented as /4/, two bits as /2/, and so forth. The lines eventually became to be written across the figure 8, which in turn became the letter "S." The result was "$".

A corollary to this theory is that the Spanish word "peso" (weight) also referred to the 8-reales cob pieces (1572 - 1732) as well as to the Spanish milled dollar (1732 - 1821) and was abbreviated as "P," with the plural indicated by a small "s" above the "P." In handwriting, the symbol could be made with one upward stroke with the "s" then being curved around the vertical line so that the resulting "$" could be written without lifting the pen from the paper.

A third theory, also rooted in paleography, is that the virgule was also the abbreviation for "shilling." Thus, instead of writing 4 shillings, 6 pence as "4s, 6d," the sum of money was often written as "4/6." Just as a short horizonal stroke through a cursive "L" became the symbol for "pound" (Latin, "libra" £ ), the oblique slash through the s, resulting in "$," came to represent the Spanish dollar, the value of which was always tariffed in terms of colonial shillings (a money of account). The 1759 edition of "Father Abraham's Almanack" (published in Philadelphia) has a table of coins showing the Spanish dollar tariffed at 7s, 6d, in Philadelphia but 8s in New York.

I have not actually examined any old handwritten documents to confirm the accuracy of any of these theories for myself. Anyone interested in becoming an amateur historian researching original source documents can find an online tutorial in English paleography for the period 1500 to 1800, sponsored by the British National Archives in conjunction with the University College of London (School of Library, Archive and Information Studies) at < http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography >. The website also has an online tutorial for medieval Latin, the official language of English documents from 1086 to 1733, and certainly a language learned by the educated class in the American colonies. Collectors of ancient coins who have more than a high-school knowledge of Latin and/or Greek can find and enjoy online resources in Latin or Greek paleography and epigraphy as amateur classical world archaeologists.

Links to virtually every aspect of American colonial life, including the "American Colonist's Library" (containing online books which likely would have been in the library of the wealthy educated class - who probably did not soil their fingers with the copper coins in our collections), can be accessed at < http://falconjmu.edu/~ramseyil/colonial.htm >.