Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, brain Stuff, Lorn vog bomb here. And there's a decent chance that every single day you see a symbol for the dollar, pound, euro, or repeat. But where did those symbols come from? Some evolved organically over the course of centuries, while others were the result of design competitions or government decisions. Today, let's
talk about those origin stories. First up, the dollar sign. Okay, the American dollar actually traces its origins to the Spanish peso, which Spain adopted in the fourteen hundreds. Formally known as the Paso docho or piece of eight, it began circulating around the globe via Spain's far flung colonies. After the United States was formed, it modeled its new currency after the paso. In the US officially adopted the dollar sign
for its currency. While no one knows it's precie origins, the most prominent theory says that it morphed out of the written abbreviation for paso, which was P S. Researchers theorized someone began combining the two letters, placing the S on top of the P, and eventually dropping the curved portion of the P the resulting symbol, and S with short vertical lines attached to the top and bottom first appeared in print after eight But there are actually three
iterations of the dollar sign, the S with two little lines that don't connect through it, or and S with one vertical line through it, or and S with two vertical lines through it. While the previous theory covers the first two symbols, it doesn't quite explain the third version.
One popular theory was suggested by Iron Rand in her novel Atlas Shrug that the double lined version was created by using the initials for the United States placing the U over the S, but no documented evidence for this existists. The double lines may just be a way of making the currency signs stand out from the surrounding letters or numbers, and double lines are common in many currency symbols. The dollar and its sign are currently used by more than
twenty countries, including Canada, Namibia, and New Zealand. Initials are usually added in front of the symbol to let people know which currency it refers to, like US dollar sign next up the Euro. In twelve, European countries joined together to form the European Union or EU, which was officially established the following year. The purpose of the EU was to enhance cooperation in areas such as citizenship rights and
foreign policy, and to create a single currency. Over the next few years, the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, decided that it's new monetary unit would be called the Euro, after Europe. The Euro symbol was derived from the Greek letter epsilon, which corresponds to the letter E in English and is the first letter in the word europe uh. The symbol is an epsilon with two lines horizontally through the center instead of one. The two
parallel lines represent stability. The actual designer of the Euro symbol has never been revealed by the European Commission. Though. While the Euro is one of the youngest currencies in the world, the Indian rupie is one of the oldest, as it can be traced back to the sixth century b c. E. However, it didn't have a symbol until the modern rupee came into existence in fifty when Sultan sher Shah Suti created a silver coin named the Rupia after the Sanskrit word rupia come meaning ape silver coin.
The coin kept the same general look until the early twentieth century. For most of its years, the rupee was denoted by the letters R S or R E. It received its symbol after a design contest was held in India. A professor of design produced the winning symbol. It incorporates elements from both the Roman script and the daven Augury script, which is a script used to write many Indian languages. Those elements include the daven Augury raw for rupia and
the Roman are for the English word rupy. It looks like a Roman capital are without the vertical line and instead with two parallel horizontal lines at the top. These lines represent India's tricolor flag and the equal symbol. Several other countries used the name Rupy or Rupia for their currencies, but they don't use the symbol. And then we have the pound sterling. Although the United Kingdom was a founding member of the European Union and remained so until it's
Brexit split, it never adopted the Euro as its currency. Instead, it kept its pound sterling, considered the oldest living currency in the world. While no one is for certain how the term pound sterling originated, most currency experts agree that it had some connection to weight and silver. The pound came from poundus, the Latin word for weight, and one British pound was equal to one pound of silver around
the eighth century, which was a huge sum. The pound symbol, a curved upper case L with a single line horizontally through the center, was derived from the Latin L in the word libra, which is Latin for scales or balances. The pound was adopted as the nation's first currency in the first pound coin was minted in fourteen nine, and in seventeen seventeen the UK began to value the pounding
gold rather than sterling silver. Some other countries, mostly former British colonies, referred to their own currency as the pound, and he's the same symbol like the Egyptian pound and the Nigerian pound. As with the dollar, countries at an initial to designate the country of origin. Today's episode is based on the article the Fascinating Stories behind five of the World's big currency symbols on how stuff Works dot com,
written by Melanie red Zeke McManus. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang. Before more podcasts, My Heart Radio visit the heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.