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Dollar is the name of more than 25 currencies. The United States dollar, named after the international currency known as the Spanish dollar, was established in 1792 and is the first so named that still survives. Others include the Australian dollar, Brunei dollar, Canadian dollar, Eastern Caribbean dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Jamaican dollar, Liberian dollar, Namibian dollar, New Taiwan dollar, New Zealand dollar, Singapore dollar, Trinidad and Tobago Dollar, and several others. The symbol for most of those currencies is the dollar sign $; the same symbol is used by many countries using peso currencies.
The name "dollar" originates from the "thaler" which was the name of a 29 g silver coin called the Joachimsthaler minted in 1520 in Bohemia, the western part of the Czech Kingdom (now the Czech Republic). The word itself comes from the word thal, German for valley.
| Eastern Caribbean dollar | XCD | 1965 | British West Indies dollar | |
| Australian dollar | AUD | and its territories | 1966 | Australian pound 1910–1966 Pound sterling 1825–1910 |
| Bahamian dollar | BSD | 1966 | Bahamian pound | |
| Barbadian dollar | BBD | 1972 | Eastern Caribbean dollar | |
| Belize dollar | BZD | 1973 | British Honduran dollar | |
| Bermudian dollar | BMD | 1970 | Pound sterling | |
| Brunei dollar (Alongside the Singapore dollar) | BND (SGD) | 1967 | Malaya and British Borneo dollar | |
| Canadian dollar | CAD | 1858 | Spanish dollar pre-1841 Canadian pound 1841–1858 Newfoundland dollar 1865–1949 in the Dominion of Newfoundland | |
| Cayman Islands dollar | KYD | 1972 | Jamaican dollar | |
| Eastern Caribbean dollar | XCD | 1965 | British West Indies dollar | |
| Fijian dollar | FJD | 1969 | Fijian pound | |
| Eastern Caribbean dollar | XCD | 1965 | British West Indies dollar | |
| Guyanese dollar | GYD | 1839 | Eastern Caribbean dollar | |
| Hong Kong dollar | HKD | 1863 | Rupee, Real (Spanish/Colonial Spain: Mexican), Chinese cash | |
| Jamaican dollar | JMD | 1969 | Jamaican pound | |
| Kiribati dollar along with the Australian dollar | KID / AUD | 1979 | Australian dollar | |
| Liberian dollar | LRD | 1937 | United States dollar | |
| Namibian dollar along with the South African rand | NAD/ZAR | 1993 | South African rand | |
| Australian dollar | AUD | 1966 | ||
| New Zealand dollar | NZD | and its territories and dependencies | 1967 | New Zealand pound |
| Eastern Caribbean dollar | XCD | 1965 | ||
| Eastern Caribbean dollar | XCD | |||
| Eastern Caribbean dollar | XCD | |||
| Singapore dollar (Alongside the Brunei dollar) | SGD (BND) | 1967 | Malaya and British Borneo dollar | |
| Solomon Islands dollar | SBD | 1977 | Australian pound | |
| Surinamese dollar | SRD | 2004 | Surinamese guilder | |
| New Taiwan dollar | TWD | 1949 | Old Taiwan dollar | |
| Trinidad and Tobago dollar | TTD | 1964 | British West Indies dollar | |
| Tuvaluan dollar along with the Australian dollar | TVD / AUD | 1976 | ||
| United States dollar | USD | and its territories | 1792 | Spanish dollar Colonial scrip |
| 2002 | Indonesian rupiah | |
| 2001 | Ecuadorian sucre | |
| 2001 | Salvadoran colón | |
| Eastern Caribbean dollar |
| US dollar |
| US dollar (alongside the pound sterling) |
| US dollar |
| Eastern Caribbean dollar |
| US dollar |
| Canadian dollar (alongside the euro) |
| US dollar |
| US dollar |
| + Caption text |
| The Confederate States dollar issued from March 1861 to 1865. |
| The name Ethiopian birr was used in the English text on the banknotes. It was divided into 100 santims (derived from the French centime). Birr became the official name, used in all languages, in 1976. |
| On 12 June 1967, the Malaysian dollar, issued by the new central bank, Central Bank of Malaysia, replaced the Malaya and British Borneo dollar. The Malaysian Ringgit name was introduced in 1975. |
| The Sierra Leonean dollar was used from 1791 to 1805. It was subdivided into 100 cents and was issued by the Sierra Leone Company. The dollar was pegged to sterling at a rate of 1 dollar = 4 shillings 2 pence. |
| The Spanish dollar was used from 1497 to 1868. |
| The Ceylonese rixdollar was a currency used in British Ceylon in the early 19th Century. |
| the Rhodesian dollar replaced the Rhodesian pound in 1970 and it was used until Zimbabwe came into being in 1980. |
| The Texas dollar was issued between January 1839 and September 1840. |
| The Zimbabwean dollar was the name of four official currencies of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 12 April 2009. During this time, it was subject to periods of extreme inflation, followed by a period of hyperinflation. Another Zimbabwean dollar was in use from 2019–2024. |
This name found its way into other languages, for example:
In contrast to other languages which adopted the second part of word joachimsthaler, the first part found its way into Russian language and became , yefimok (ефимок).
The predecessor of the Joachimsthaler was the Guldengroschen or Guldiner which was a large silver coin originally minted in German Tyrol in 1486 and introduced into the Duchy of Saxony in 1500. The King of Bohemia wanted a similar silver coin, which became the Joachimsthaler.
For the English North American colonists, however, the Spanish peso or "piece of eight" had always held first place, and this coin was also called the "dollar" as early as 1581. or "pieces of eight" were distributed widely in the Spanish colonies in the New World and in the Philippines.National Geographic. June 2002. p. 1. Ask Us.
On 2 April 1792, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton reported to Congress the precise amount of silver found in Spanish dollar coins in common use in the states. As a result, the United States dollar was defined Act of April 2, A.D. 1792 of the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, Section 9. as a unit of pure silver weighing 371 4/16th grains (24.057 grams), or 416 grains of standard silver (standard silver being defined as 371.25/416 in silver, and balance in alloy).Section 13 of the Act. It was specified that the "money of account" of the United States should be expressed in those same "dollars" or parts thereof. Additionally, all lesser-denomination coins were defined as percentages of the dollar coin, such that a half-dollar was to contain half as much silver as a dollar, quarter-dollars would contain one-fourth as much, and so on.
In an act passed in January 1837, the dollar's weight was reduced to 412.5 grains and alloy at 90% silver, resulting in the same fine silver content of 371.25 grains. On 21 February 1853, the quantity of silver in the lesser coins was reduced, with the effect that their denominations no longer represented their silver content relative to dollar coins.
Various acts have subsequently been passed affecting the amount and type of metal in U.S. coins, so that today there is no legal definition of the term "dollar" to be found in U.S. statute. Currently the closest thing to a definition is found in United States Code Title 31, Section 5116, paragraph b, subsection 2: "The Secretary of shall sell silver under conditions the Secretary considers appropriate for at least $1.292929292 a fine troy ounce."
Silver was mostly removed from U.S. coinage by 1965 and the dollar became a free-floating fiat money without a commodity backing defined in terms of real gold or silver. The US Mint continues to make silver $1-denomination coins, but these are not intended for general circulation.
That these three ratios are all approximately equal has some interesting consequences. Let the gold to silver ratio be exactly 15.5. Then a pennyweight of gold, that is 24 grains of gold, is nearly equal in value to a dollar of silver (1 dwt of gold = $1.002 of silver). Second, a dollar of gold is nearly equal in value to a pound of silver ($1 of gold = 5754 3/8 grains of silver = 0.999 Lb of silver). Third, the number of grains in a dollar (371.25) roughly equals the number of grams in a troy pound (373.24).
In 1804, a British five-shilling piece, or crown, was sometimes called "dollar". It was an overstruck Spanish eight Spanish real coin (the famous "piece of eight"), the original of which was known as a Spanish dollar. Large numbers of these eight-real coins were captured during the Napoleonic Wars, hence their re-use by the Bank of England. They remained in use until 1811. All Things Austen: An Encyclopedia of Austen's World p. 444 During World War II, when the U.S. dollar was (approximately) valued at five shillings, the half crown (2s 6d) acquired the nickname "half dollar" or "half a dollar" in the UK.
The term "dollar" has also been adopted by other countries for currencies which do not share a common history with other dollars. Many of these currencies adopted the name after moving from a £sd-based to a decimalized monetary system. Examples include the Australian dollar, the New Zealand dollar, the Jamaican dollar, the Cayman Islands dollar, the Fiji dollar, the Namibian dollar, the Rhodesian dollar, the Zimbabwe dollar, and the Solomon Islands dollar.
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