Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Currencies of the World

Starting point is 00:00:00 Every day, billions of people exchange pieces of paper, metal coins, and increasingly numbers on a screen. The names attached to that money often have history stretching back centuries, with origins and weights of silver, royal crowns, and ancient coins. Many of the names have similar origins, even if they happen to be in the other side of the world from a country that shares a currency name with them. Learn more about the currencies of the world and how they got their names on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. When WestJet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere,

Starting point is 00:00:51 and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off.

Starting point is 00:01:45 Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Box. Sitting behind me on a shelf as I record this episode is a big wad of bills that I collected on my travels. It's actually a rather impressive collection of cash, but it probably isn't worth very much. I estimate that if I were to convert every bill separately, it might be worth about $200 in total, but doing that would be next to impossible because there are usually minimums or limits on the amount of cash you can exchange. And mostly there's zero demand for these current. unless you happen to be in that country.

Starting point is 00:02:36 The number of individual currencies in the world today is difficult to pin down because several countries share the same currency, several non-countries have currencies, and many currencies are pegged to other currencies. For example, 21 countries use the euro. Somali land has its own currency, despite not being a recognized country, and the Bahamas pegs its currency to the U.S. dollar one-to-one. The number usually given is that 163 currencies are used by UN member states, 49 of which have fixed exchange rates with other currencies, but there are others beyond that.

Starting point is 00:03:16 For example, the Cook Islands dollar is pegged to the New Zealand dollar, but in reality it's used only for collectors' coins and notes, such as a $3 bill and a triangular $2 coin. In day-to-day use, New Zealand dollars are used. used in transactions, but there is technically a Cook Islands dollar. What I want to do for the rest of this episode is cover some of the currencies in the world, what they are called, and why they're named that. You're probably familiar with some of the currencies, and I'm guessing you're probably also unfamiliar with the vast majority.

Starting point is 00:03:52 I can't cover all of them, but I can get through some of the interesting ones. And hold on because there's a lot of them. I've previously done an episode on the history of the dollar and where that word came from, so I'll leave you to that episode for the currencies of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and every other country that has a currency called a dollar. The word dollar actually stems from a silver mine in what is today the Czech Republic. Another popular currency is the pound. Pounds are used by the United Kingdom, Egypt, Lebanon, South Sudan, and Sudan.

Starting point is 00:04:29 The origin of the pound is pretty straightforward. In Britain, sterling is the name of the currency, and a pound is a unit of the sterling. The pound originally referred to a pound by weight of silver. Pound is technically short for pound sterling. It derives from the Latin Libra Pondo, meaning roughly a pound by weight. And this also explains why the pound's abbreviation is an L derived from Libra. More on that in a bit. Sterling refers to high-quality English silver pennies.

Starting point is 00:05:05 240 sterling pennies used to make one pound. Technically, each British territory and all the crown colonies have their own pounds, which I've also covered in a previous episode. Likewise, the name Euro is pretty straightforward. I'm going to have a future episode on the creation of the Euro, but it was literally just named after the continent because they had to come up with something everybody could agree upon. Japan's currency is the yen.

Starting point is 00:05:33 In Japanese, the word is actually N, which means round, and refers to the shape of the coin. Yen is just an anglicized version of the Japanese word N. The symbol for the yen is the capital letter Y with two horizontal lines through it. It was originally used in the West, but the Japanese later adopted it as well. The yen symbol is also used by the Chinese Yuan. The word yuan has the same origin as the yen in that it is just the word for round. Similar to the British currency, the yuan is just the base unit and not the name of the currency itself, which is officially the renminbi.

Starting point is 00:06:14 However, most people just call it the yuan. The South and North Korean currencies are the Wan. Wan comes from the same Chinese character and concept as the Chinese Yuan and the Japanese yen. in that it just means round. All three names developed from terms referring to round silver coins. Six countries currently have a currency called the rupee. India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, and the Seychelles. Rupi comes from the Sanskrit word rupee, meaning wrought silver, formed silver, or something made from silver.

Starting point is 00:06:55 The name eventually became associated with silver. coins, particularly under the Mughal-era monetary system. The Indian rupee symbol is based on the Davenagory letter Ra and the letter R from the Latin alphabet. The currency of Indonesia is the similar sounding rupee, which is nothing more than the local version of the word rupee. The currency in Russia and Belarus is called the ruble. The word ruble comes from the Russian word rubit, meaning to cut or chop. It likely referred to a piece of silver cut from a larger ingot, which was then used as money. So the name essentially means something like a cutoff piece of silver. There are currently eight countries that have a currency called the peso, Mexico, Argentina, Chile,

Starting point is 00:07:45 Colombia, the Philippines, Uruguay, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. There are actually many more countries that used to use the peso as the currency as well. The peso is just a just the Spanish word for weight. The origin of the word comes from the same Latin root as the word for pound, pando. The symbol for the peso is the same as the dollar sign, and the use of the peso symbol actually predates its use for the dollar. The currency of Brazil is the real. In Portuguese, real means royal. Medieval Portuguese kings issued coins by that name, and Brazil revived the old name for its present currency in 1994. The currency it was a repatriation. The currency it was the Cruzeiro, and when they change currencies, they just adopted the old Portuguese currency

Starting point is 00:08:30 name. While most European countries have adopted the euro, not all of them have. Several EU member states have retained their own currencies. All Scandinavian countries have currencies with similar names that literally mean crown. Sweden and Iceland used the Krona, while Denmark and Norway used the crone. The name reflects the crown as the traditional symbol of royal monetary authority. Sweden and Norway and Denmark are all still monarchies, but Iceland is a republic, but it kept its name for the currency. Likewise, the Czech currency is the Koruna, and the currency of Estona is the croon, both of which mean crown. Hungary's currency is the Forrent, and it's derived from the medieval Florentine gold coin, the Farino-Doro, which,

Starting point is 00:09:20 which was enormously influential across all of Europe. Poland's currency is the Zwata. Zwata means golden, and the term originally referred to gold coins circulating in Poland and eventually became the formal name of the Polish monetary unit. Romania and Moldova's currency is called the Lou. Liu means lion. And it comes from the Dutch lewand dollar or lion dollar,

Starting point is 00:09:44 a coin bearing a lion that circulated extensively in southeastern Europe during the 17th century. Now, it should be noted that all EU countries that do not currently use the euro, that being Sweden, Poland, Czechia, Romania, Hungary, but not Denmark, are obligated to adopt the euro at some point. However, there's no timeline so they can indefinitely postpone it if they don't want to actually adopt it. The Ukrainian currency is the Harivnia. It comes from an old Slavic word connected with the neck or main. A herivnia was originally a neck ornament and later became the name for standardized weights of silver used as money in medieval Kivan Rus. The Turkish currency is the lira, which is also the former name of the Italian currency,

Starting point is 00:10:31 and it comes from the Latin word Libra, meaning pound or balance scale. And here I should explain why the pound, peso, and lira all have similar roots, even though they're very different words. Libra is the Latin word for the unit of weight, and Pondo was the Latin word for the unit of weight, and Pondo was the Latin word for. for two-way, which became the Germanic word pun, which became the English word pound. The word pound then became associated with the unit of weight. So after centuries of translation and adaptation, Libra Pondo, which meant the weight of a pound,

Starting point is 00:11:08 ended up with both words meaning pound, which is why the symbol for the British pound is an L. If we turn our attention to the Middle East and North Africa, we find Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Serbia, and Tunisia, which all use the dinar as currency. The dinar comes from the Roman denarius, which was one of the principal silver coins of ancient Rome. The United Arab Emirates in Morocco use the dirham, which is derived from the ancient Greek coin, the drachma, via Arabic. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, and Iran all have a currency called the Rial. As with the Brazilian currency of the same name, it means royal. However, these currencies come from Spanish.

Starting point is 00:11:58 Spanish silver reales circulated widely throughout the Middle East and Indian Ocean trade, and the name was adopted into local monetary systems. As of the recording of this episode, the Iranian Rial is the least valuable currency in the world by its base unit. In Iran's open market, the Rial has recently traded at roughly 1.9 million real. to one U.S. dollar. On a personal note, I should add, I think the notes from the countries around the Persian Gulf are actually the best-looking banknotes in the world. In South and Central America, several countries have named their currencies after people.

Starting point is 00:12:37 Panama's is named after Vasco de Balboa, Venezuela's is named after Simone Bolivar, Costa Rica's is named after Christopher Columbus, Nicaraguas is named after Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba, and Honduras's currency is named after Lempira, a 16th century indigenous leader who resisted the Spanish. In Africa, Botswana's currency is the Pula, which comes from the Setswana word meaning rain. Fourteen countries in West and Central Africa Frank, which originally stood for Cullinay Francaise de Freque. They kept the initials, but they no longer have the same meaning as they're no longer colonies.

Starting point is 00:13:16 Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Somalia all still use the shilling, which got its name from an old British coin. Zambia and Malawi use the Quacha, which means dawn in the local languages. The name symbolized the dawn of a new era following independence. In Southeast Asia, Thailand uses the bot, which was originally a Thai unit of weight used for precious metals. Malaysia uses the ringet, which in Malay means jagged or serrated. It referred to the milled or ridged edges of Spanish silver dollars that circulated widely in Southeast Asia.

Starting point is 00:13:54 And finally, in Vietnam, you have the Dong, which also just happens to be the Vietnamese word for copper. I know I've thrown a lot at you in a very short period of time, and there are still dozens and dozens of countries that I haven't covered. But you might have noticed several trends in how countries name their currencies, and this holds even for most of the currency. that I didn't mention. Probably the most popular names come from the names of precious metals or the units used to measure them, and that includes the dollar and the pound. Next are currencies that refer to a monarchy, either by calling it royal or by naming it after a crown. Then there are currencies named after ancient or medieval coins, and a small group that's named after significant people in history. And there are also a small number of major currencies that refer to the shape of a coin

Starting point is 00:14:45 or simply to the word coin. In a future episode, I'm going to cover how all these currencies interact with one another in foreign currency exchanges. You don't need to know the names of every currency in the world, but you should be aware there are a lot of different currencies out there, and all of them have a unique history. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer.

Starting point is 00:15:15 big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you two can have it read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Currencies of the World

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