Symbols of Money

Now that we know the origin of the new rupee symbol (a fusion of the Latin ‘R’ and Devanagari ‘Ra’), here’s a look at how other major currency symbols evolved across the world.

Now that we know the origin of the new rupee symbol (a fusion of the Latin ‘R’ and Devanagari ‘Ra’), here’s a look at how other major currency symbols evolved across the world.

US DOLLAR: While Ayn Rand, in her novel Atlas Shrugged, supports the theory that the sign is derived from the initials of United States (U superimposed on S, and then the bottom of U snipped off to get the symbol with two strokes), the most popular explanation is that it came from Spain. According to the Oxford Dictionary, it is derived from the figure 8, representing the Spanish ‘pieces of eight’. By the time of the American Revolution in the late 18th century, the Spanish dollar had gained significance over the colonial British pound. Experts say the $ sign evolved from the old Spanish abbreviation for peso, ‘ps’, which eventually became an S with a single stroke denoting P.

BRITISH POUND: The symbol £ is simply the letter L, derived  from the Latin word libra, meaning scales, which also gave rise to the abbreviation lb for pound as a measure of weight. This was used since the currency pound was originally worth exactly one pound of pure silver. And hence the name too.

CHINESE YUÁN AND JAPANESE YEN:  Both mean ‘round object’ and use the symbol ¥, based on the letter Y. The yuán is the principal unit of Renminbi, which was circulated in its current avatar in 1949 and translates as ‘people’s currency’. 

EURO: The European Commission polled the public in 1996 on a shortlist of 10 designs for the symbol and ultimately selected €. The Commission has said that inspiration for the symbol came from the Greek letter epsilon, pointing to the cradle of European civilisation, and the first letter of Europe, crossed by two parallel lines to certify the stability of the euro. A German named Arthur Eisenmenger later claimed he had designed the symbol decades earlier.

ISRAELI NEW SHEKEL: The ‘new shekel’  is denoted by combining the first Hebrew letters of each word (shekel and hadash).

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