硬币的名字是怎么来的？
[ 2006-12-25 11:38 ]
英语中不同面值的硬币有不同的名字，这一点常常让中国人头痛，尤其是去国外读书和旅游的时候。下面就给大家介绍一下这些名字的来历，让你不再困惑。
 Most coins are derived from Latin words. They are
named after people, places, or things.
Even the word coin translates from the Latin "cuneus," meaning wedge, and was thusly named because early coins
resembled the wedges used to coin coins. The cent, from the Latin "centum,"
meaning one hundred, the dime, from the Latin "decimus," meaning tenth, and the
French franc, from the Latin "Franconium Rex," meaning King of the Franks, are
all examples of the naming of money, the root of all evil which translates from
the Latin word "mona," meaning to warn!
On to a weightier manner in which people named coins: by a scale. The English
pound, translates from the Latin "pondo," meaning pound, orfrom the Latin "libra
pondo," meaning a pound of weight. This method of naming coins weighed heavily
in naming of the Spanish peso and of the Italian lira.
A sense of fairness dictates that some coins bear the names of the metals of
which they are composed. Thus, the nickel is made of nickel. Location, not Latin,
sometimes figures prominently into
the naming of sum (oops!), some coins. The dollar, not always in paper form,
originally hailed from the silver mines of Bohemia, where Bohemians extracted
silver for the coins, and minted them in the town of Joachimsthal. Realizing
that the coin they termed the Joachimsthaler, short of lacking in creativity,
was rather lengthy, the Bohemian friends lost the head of the name, and kept the
tail, with the end result being the thaler. The thaler eventually lost its lisp,
and became dollar.
Many countries used their word for crown, for example, crown, sovereign,
krone, krun, krone, corona (not the beer), to demonstrate that some crown
authority initially granted permission to mint them. Other countries named coins
in honor of their heroes, such as the Panamanian balboa, after the explorer
Balboa, the Venezuelan Bolivar, after one of its national heroes, and the
Peruvian sol, also not a beer, but the Spanish word for sun, after this ancient
Incan object of worship.
wedge 楔
nickel 五分镍币
prominently 显著地
（英语点津 Annabel 编辑） |
