# 'Money', 'pecunia', ...



## ThomasK

What does money refer to in your language please, etymologically, I mean ? 

Dutch/G geld gold
French argent silver
Lat. pecunia cattle, I believe

I have also heard of 'shell money' but then we seem to be referring to the pre-money system, the trade/ exchange system (bartering ?). Still, might be an interesting track - on a thin line between linguistics and and sociology/... (is 'thin line' correctly used here ?).


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## Maroseika

Modern Russian деньги goes back to the Tatar word, which source is somewhere in the Persian.
Anyway in all these languages the word meant "coin".

However before the epoch of close contact between Eastern Slavs and Tatar peoples the word used for money was "куна" (kuna) from куница - marten. Animal fells (not only marten, of course) were widely used as money in Russia at least until 11-12 centuries.
One куна consisted of 22 гривна < грива (mane), originally meaning also "necklace, ring, weight, coin". 
Original basic rate of 1 куна was 1 dirhem - the coin Arabs used when trading with Ancient Russia.


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## OldAvatar

The origin of the Romanian word _bani _(*money*, plural) is officially unknown.
Though, it is good to know about the existance, in Middle Ages, of some sort of local princes, named with the same word: _bani_. These guys were the administrators of some pretty large regions and usually people had to pay taxes when they were travelling from one of these regions to another. The origin of _ban _(as a local landlord) is probably Turkic, however, the word exists in Hungarian and Serbian too, as far as I know.


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## ThomasK

Could you transcribe, Maroseika ? (Is it somehting like deivli ? (Just wildy guessing based on Greek)) 

But then: is coin the basic meaning of the word ? (Thanks)


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## OldAvatar

ThomasK said:


> Could you transcribe, Maroseika ? (Is it somehting like deivli ? (Just wildy guessing based on Greek))
> (Thanks)



I guess it is _denghee._


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## Maroseika

ThomasK said:


> Could you transcribe, Maroseika ? (Is it somehting like deivli ? (Just wildy guessing based on Greek))
> 
> But then: is coin the basic meaning of the word ? (Thanks)


Деньги - [den'gi] (all the consonants are soft).
According to the etymologists it meant "coin" in all these languages. Maybe somebody will clarify its further etymilofy.


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## Maroseika

OldAvatar said:


> The origin of the Romanian word _bani _(*money*, plural) is officially unknown.


I dare to assume it might be connected with Frank. _*bannjan_ "to order or prohibit under penalty" (www.etymonline.com), i.e. orginally meaning a kind of fee.


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## OldAvatar

Maroseika said:


> I dare to assume it might be connected with Frank. _*bannjan_ "to order or prohibit under penalty" (www.etymonline.com), i.e. orginally meaning a kind of fee.



I think it is rather connected with this.

See the second explanation from the above link and also this one:

ban /bæn, bɑn/  –noun  1.(formerly) the governor of Croatia and Slavonia.   2.History/Historical. a provincial governor of the southern marches of Hungary.   
[Origin: 1605–15; < Serbo-Croatian _bân,_ contracted from _*bojan,_ _*bajan,_ said to be < a Turkic personal name, perh. introduced into the Balkans by the Avars; cf. MGk _bo_(_e_)_ános_


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## Christo Tamarin

OldAvatar said:


> I think it is rather connected with this.
> 
> See the second explanation and also this one:
> 
> ban /bæn, bɑn/ –noun 1.(formerly) the governor of Croatia and Slavonia. 2.History/Historical. a provincial governor of the southern marches of Hungary.
> [Origin: 1605–15; < Serbo-Croatian _bân,_ contracted from _*bojan,_ _*bajan,_ said to be < a Turkic personal name, perh. introduced into the Balkans by the Avars; cf. MGk _bo_(_e_)_ános_


I agree with OldAvatar.

The Romanian word *bani *formerly meant *governors*. Some governors put their images on the coins they minted as it is usual until now. So, people began to call those coins *bani*. We may imagine changing the word _coin_ to _queen_ in England as the coins have pictures of the queen imprinted on them.


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## Maroseika

OldAvatar said:


> I think it is rather connected with this.


Here I failed to see any trace of the idea of "fee", that's why I stopped on another word.
But anyway, all that is quite hypothetical.





> ban /bæn, bɑn/ –noun 1.(formerly) the governor of Croatia and Slavonia. 2.History/Historical. a provincial governor of the southern marches of Hungary.
> [Origin: 1605–15; < Serbo-Croatian _bân,_ contracted from _*bojan,_ _*bajan,_ said to be < a Turkic personal name, perh. introduced into the Balkans by the Avars; cf. MGk _bo_(_e_)_ános_


This means that "banu" might be called such a way due to the protrait of a governor in the coin. Bythe way, Russian ancient narrator's name Боян (Bojan) is also sometimes derive from a Turkic personal name.


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## Outsider

Portuguese _*dinheiro*_ and Spanish _*dinero*_ are from Latin _*denarius*_, the name of a Roman unit of currency.


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## berndf

ThomasK said:


> Dutch/G geld gold


 
_Geld_ is derived from the verb _gelten_ which today meant _to be valid_ but originally meant to _pay, to compensate, to reward, to yield_. The original meaning still persists in derived Verbs like _vergelten_. The English yield (both verb and noun) is a cognate.

Source: http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Proje...pattern=&lemmapattern=&verspattern=#GG06414L0


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## berndf

Italian _soldi_ is derived from the Roman coin _solidus._


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## Outsider

Outsider said:


> Portuguese _*dinheiro*_ and Spanish _*dinero*_ are from Latin _*denarius*_, the name of a Roman unit of currency.


This reminded me of the Arabic term _dinar_. According to the Merriam-Webster, it is also derived from Latin, via Greek:



> Arabic _dīnār_, from Late Greek _dēnarion denarius_, from Latin _denarius_


As for _denarius_:



> [...] coin worth ten asses, from _denarius_ containing ten, from _deni_ ten each, from _decem_ ten [...]


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## Mahaodeh

Yes, but dinar is just the name of the currency; there is also leira, riyal, juneih, and dirham; all of which are loanwords referring to different currencies.

Maal مال is the proper name for money and whatever has monetary value (such as gold, land or livestock..etc.) it does not have any further eytmology up to my knowledge. Fuluus فلوس is also used in collequal to refer to money, it differs from maal in that it refers to money only and not anything else such as gold..etc. Fuluus is the plural of fils, which is also the name of a currency; it was originally the name of a coin made of copper and was derived from an old (rarely used nowadays) name for the small thin peices on the skin of fishes (don't know the name in english).


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## ThomasK

As for 'geld' in Dutch/ German: my guess was erroneous, I must conclude ??? INcredible. Yet, in French I am quite certain the link with silver (argent) is correct, I hope. 

I checked _Gold_, found the idg. root, but not the idg. root of _Geld_.


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## Outsider

ThomasK said:


> Yet, in French I am quite certain the link with silver (argent) is correct, I hope.


Yes, from _argentium_, Latin for "silver". The chemical symbol for silver is "Arg".


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## ThomasK

You are referring to fish scales, I guess, Mahaodeh. That reminds me of my shell money... But shells seem more precious (= worth more money...) than scales. That seems strange though...


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## Outsider

The currency of Macau is called the _*pataca*_, a Portuguese word from Arabic _abu taka_, according to this dictionary. (The Wikipedia page says it's the equivalent of Spanish _peso_, but that sounds dubious to me.)

In Portugal, however, _pataca_ is a slightly old-fashioned informal word for "money". 

By the way, there was an earlier thread about informal terms for money.


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## ThomasK

Thanks for the hint, but then it was fun, now it is serious ! ;-)

I just mean: I am more interested in the origin of the money words, because it might reveal certain associations that are interesting in a larger-than-linguistic _(is there a precise word for that in Engels ? Para-linguistic (next-to-linguistic ???))_ sense...I am hoping for... revelations.


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## Outsider

Well, I'm sure you can get the same kind of revelations from colloquial words.


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## DrWatson

Outsider said:


> Yes, from _argentium_, Latin for "silver". The chemical symbol for silver is "Arg".


It's Ag, actually. 

The Finnish word for money is *raha* which has its origin in a Germanic language. It used to mean squirrel fur, the main commodity widely used as currency before metallic money was introduced. Nowadays the word's prior meaning is virtually unknown among people.


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## Maroseika

DrWatson said:


> The Finnish word for money is *raha* which has its origin in a Germanic language.


Do you know its German etymology?


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## sokol

Mahaodeh said:


> Yes, but dinar is just the name of the currency; there is also leira, riyal, juneih, and dirham; all of which are loanwords referring to different currencies.



You are obviously right for all countries where 'dinar' (or a related word) refers to the currency and not 'money' as such.

But sometimes 'dinar' (or whatever variety of Latin 'denarius') is used definitely in the sense of 'money' - this even was the case in old Yougoslavia, in the YR of Slovenia, when the currency was called (in Slovenian) *'dinar'* - while money as such was called *'denar': *same Latin route, different phonetics (with 'dinar' being, if you like, a Serbocroatian 'loan'). The 'dinar' exists no more (except in Serbia; Slovenia now has the euro while short-lived tolar too is history already), 'denar' still is used (meaning 'money').

(In Serbian/Croatian money is called 'novac', or at least to my knowledge 'dinar' is/was only used for the currency, but probably someone with better knowledge of S/C/B/M than I have can clarify this.)


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## DrWatson

Maroseika said:


> Do you know its German etymology?


I found something here: http://www.tanssi.net/keskustelu/192/197012.html

Apparently *raha* can be traced back to Proto-Germanic *_skraha_ or _*skraho_ which carried the meaning "dry animal skin". There are cognates in Norwegian (skraa, "a piece of skin") and Icelandic (skrá, "list" or (archaic) "dried skin, parchment")


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## ThomasK

Outsider said:


> Well, I'm sure you can get the same kind of revelations from colloquial words.


 
 I agree, but not all words open up that easily. Like money...

[Not that important but I would not be amazed if raha/skraa and scratch ('scharten' in my Flemish dialect) were related. This may be wishful thinking on my behalf but it takes some _scratching _to get_ skraa_, doesn't it ?


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## ireney

The greek word (χρήμα most often used in the plural, χρήματα) means "that which is used".


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## scythosarmatian

DrWatson said:


> I found something here:
> 
> Apparently *raha* can be traced back to Proto-Germanic *_skraha_ or _*skraho_ which carried the meaning "dry animal skin". There are cognates in Norwegian (skraa, "a piece of skin") and Icelandic (skrá, "list" or (archaic) "dried skin, parchment")


 
*skraho is a cognate of Russian "shkura" (pelt), "skornyak" (skinner).

BTW, how do traditional linguists explain the similarity between English "coin" and Russian "kuna"?


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## ThomasK

Just a kind of summary in-between : let's focus on *money/ gold/ argent* (although he we cannot avoid a link with *coins*, I suppose, as money refers to 'monnaie', which refers to coins, now, I think) seemed to refer to 
- service, duty, debt

- silver (gold ? Copper ?)
- (_denarius_ > ...) ???
- cattle (_pecunia_), if I am not mistaken 
- scales 
(-shells)
- ruler (_bani_)
- necklaces, rings, ...
- skins 

[Additions or corrections welcome !]


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## avok

In Turkish, "money" is "*para*". According to the online dictionary it comes from the Persian word "para" which means bit/part



> ~ Fa pāra parça " pare


 
In colloquial Turkish, "money" is "*papel*" and according to the same dictionary, it comes from the Spanish / Ladino word "papel" which means "paper".



> İsp papel kâğıt ~ Lat papyrus papirüs " papirüs. Muhtemelen Yahudi İspanyolcasından. Karş. İng paper < Fr papier (kâğıt)


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## Gwan

I have no idea for the English word 'money' but 'salary' apparently comes from the Latin for salt, which is what Roman soldiers used to be paid in. By the way, I have no source for that other than my memory, but pretty sure it's accurate.
Regarding den'gi - I learnt in Russian class that it's one of the very few words to have entered Russian from Mongolian - an unusual occurrence considering the long period of Mongolian dominion over Russia, and apparently reflective of the lack of cultural integration of the Mongols - they were primarily interested in getting as much den'gi as possible out of Russia and that's about it! (Right?)


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## Maroseika

Gwan said:


> Regarding den'gi - I learnt in Russian class that it's one of the very few words to have entered Russian from Mongolian - an unusual occurrence considering the long period of Mongolian dominion over Russia, and apparently reflective of the lack of cultural integration of the Mongols - they were primarily interested in getting as much den'gi as possible out of Russia and that's about it! (Right?)


Actually a lot of Russian words have Turkic and Mongolian origin due to 200 years of such a tight and close connection. As for Mongolian it's not so easy to distinguish between proper Mongolian and Turkic because Mongolians themselves borrowed a lot from the Turkic, who, for their turn, borrowed from the neighbours. In particular, den'gi Turks borrowed from the Persians (according to some etymologists). Mongolian teŋge and Kalmyk tēŋgn are Turkic loans as well.


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## avok

What does "dengi" mean originally?


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## ThomasK

You're quite right about salary. 

Iis the conclusion that anything valuable mainly led to the name of money (even services, as in _geld_) ? And that coins were called after their origin (silver, imprint of a leader, ...) ? This is just some kind of preposterous (...) attempt at some kind of conclusion... 

Still interested in the _den'gi_ !


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## Gwan

Maroseika said:


> Actually a lot of Russian words have Turkic and Mongolian origin due to 200 years of such a tight and close connection. As for Mongolian it's not so easy to distinguish between proper Mongolian and Turkic because Mongolians themselves borrowed a lot from the Turkic, who, for their turn, borrowed from the neighbours. In particular, den'gi Turks borrowed from the Persians (according to some etymologists). Mongolian teŋge and Kalmyk tēŋgn are Turkic loans as well.


 
Wrong again! I'll have to tell my Russian teacher that! Thanks.


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## Maroseika

avok said:


> What does "dengi" mean originally?


A coin, most likely. This was discussed already a week ago. Please look my message of 13 May.


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## HUMBERT0

avok said:


> In colloquial Turkish, "money" is "*papel*" and according to the same dictionary, it comes from the Spanish / Ladino word "papel" which means "paper".


Very interesting in Spanish, along with "billete", we use the word *"papel moneda"* (paper coin) for bills/notes.


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## ThomasK

Anyone disagreeing with the conclusion (for the time being) that the name of money refers to 
 - an aspect of its exterior/ appearance or
 - a valuable ?


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## Aoyama

In Japanese it would be 金　read "kané" meaning "metal", but it can also be read "kin" meaning "gold".
In Chinese it would be 銭　, read "qian" (this ideogram is the old form), meaning "money", originally a "monetary unit" (also an agricultural tool and a weight unit). The same ideogram can be read "sen" in Japanese and is the hundredth part of a YEN.

In Hebrew it is "keceph" (sorry, no Hebrew letters here).


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## ThomasK

So this is a reference to valuables, I guess. Very interesting.


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## avok

HUMBERT0 said:


> Very interesting in Spanish, along with "billete", we use the word *"papel moneda"* (paper coin) for bills/notes.


 
Yes indeed !


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## Aoyama

> In colloquial Turkish, "money" is "*papel*" and according to the same dictionary, it comes from the Spanish / Ladino word "papel" which means "paper".





> in Spanish, along with "billete", we use the word *"papel moneda"* (paper coin) for bills/notes.


Which is the same as French "papier monnaie" from where it may come (or the other way around).


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## Aoyama

If "money" is related to the French "monnaie" (coming from Latin "moneta"), "coin" comes from the French "coin" (a wedge to mint ... coins), cf. Fleur de Coin.
If originally "monnaie" meant "coin" in French, it's more common meaning is now "change" (de la monnaie).
"Coin" will be "pièce"[de monnaie]. Pièce has given piécette (small coin), which is the origin of "peseta" in Spanish.


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## Tararam

Kesef (כסף) in hebrew... means silver in modern hebrew though in the bible it is pronounced K*a*sef sometimes.


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## Toma

Just a small additional note. 
The name Boyan/Bayan is not from altaic origin for sure. 
Both forms can be deirved from old verbal roots like baya-ti or boya-ti, therefore you can exclude that part from your theory.


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## stichy

Dinero-Español


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## Aoyama

> Kesef (כסף) in Hebrew... means *silver* in modern Hebrew


 (see also my post #39, sorry to quote myself), which makes it similar as French "argent"/ "de l'argent" = money but also silver.


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## berndf

Aoyama said:


> In Japanese it would be 金　read "kané" meaning "metal", but it can also be read "kin" meaning "gold".
> In Chinese it would be 銭　, read "qian" (this ideogram is the old form), meaning "money", originally a "monetary unit" (also an agricultural tool and a weight unit). The same ideogram can be read "sen" in Japanese and is the hundredth part of a YEN.


 
In Chinese, 金 (modern standard Mandarin ponunciation has shifted from kin1 to jin1) can also be used to to mean money, like in Japanese.


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## cajzl

Proto-Slavic *pěnęzь *is a loanword from Germanic pfenning (penning, pending, panding), which is related to Latin pendere, pondus (to weight, balance).

(ě = yat, ę = nasal e, ь = soft yer)

Czech: peníze
Slovak: peniaze
Polish: peniądze


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## Slavista

In Spanish, _dinero_ means "money", the word _plata_ (lit. 'silver' cf. _platinum_) is also used in Argentina, some parts of Mexico, and very informally and colloquially in Caribbean speech.


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## ThomasK

I have just read about the background of buying and paying... But I'll put that in a new thread...


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## dudasd

sokol said:


> In Serbian/Croatian money is called 'novac', or at least to my knowledge 'dinar' is/was only used for the currency, but probably someone with better knowledge of S/C/B/M than I have can clarify this.


 
Yes, "novac" (and also plural: "novci" - though this plural form is a bit archaic nowadays) means money in general; it comes from the root "nov" = new; with different explanations. One of the main theories says that it just meant "new money" (and the word replaced the old loanword "penez" or "pinez" that had been used amongst South Slavs); another theory relates it to Novo Brdo (lit. New Hill), an important medieval silver mine where coins were also minted, so at the beginning it meant "coins from Novo Brdo".

Another common word (at least in Serbia and Bosnia) is "pare" (plural of "para", of Persian origin if I remember well).


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## ThomasK

Would you have any idea of what 'para' could mean ?


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## dudasd

The dictionaries say it meant "piece". The same root (with the same or similar meaning) you'll find in some other languages as well.


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## ThomasK

Interesting, we say 'munt (_currency_)- stuk (_piece_)', but never only 'stuk' as such (except in a context where _muntstuk_ has just been used).


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## Matamoscas

The Irish word _airgead_ means both silver and money and appears too close to _argentum_ and _argent_ to be a coincidence.  But silver money is _airgead geal_ (bright /shiny)


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## javier8907

Aoyama said:


> If "money" is related to the French "monnaie" (coming from Latin "moneta"), "coin" comes from the French "coin" (a wedge to mint ... coins), cf. Fleur de Coin.
> If originally "monnaie" meant "coin" in French, it's more common meaning is now "change" (de la monnaie).
> "Coin" will be "pièce"[de monnaie]. Pièce has given piécette (small coin), which is the origin of "peseta" in Spanish.



I read that "peseta" comes not from French but from a similar Catalan development (as the first coinage of a peseta coin, this is, one fifth of a peso, happened in Barcelona in 1805, so it's likely that that particular coin got a Catalan name). It was much later that pesetas became the official monetary unit.

In Spain, "papeles" (I've always heard it in plural) was one of the various colloquial ways to call the sum of 1000 pesetas.

The most usual term for, both formal and informal, is "dinero". There are other colloquial words, the most usual and extensive of which is "pasta" (lit. "dough" or "pasta"), and I can think of other two: "tela" (lit. "cloth") and "lana" (lit. wool). Whoever knows how any of these can come to mean "money", please explain it.

In Basque, the word for money is "dirua". I don't know where it comes from, but I suppose it's also Latin "denarius" or a later Romance or Spanish word (the loss of intervocalical n was usual at earlier stages of the language). I also know an informal word (it's not my native language, anyway), which is "xoxak", always in plural (where x is pronounced as English "sh", but stronger); in singular it would be "xoxa". I leave it as a challenge to find where it comes from: one would be tempted to say it was the name of a coin (the same way pennies, shillings, florins, sovereigns, threepences, farthings... had it in English), or perhaps a general name for "coin"; the usual word for coin is "txanpon" ("txanpona" with a definite article).


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## dudasd

Could "dirua" be related to "dirhem" and "drachma"?


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## javier8907

I don't know; probably Islamic money was much used in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries even in Christian land, as the young and small Christian kingdoms would have little resources so as to produce their own coins. But I don't see the switch from e/a to u and the disappearance of the m. One would expect a "direma", "dirama", "dirmea", "dirmia", or something similar. And it seems a pretty strange thing, being that Hispanic Romances (I don't know about Gascon, which was also a surrounding language) took the word for money from Latin "denarius", giving "dinero", "diner" (Catalan)...

By the way, the switch from o to u is very common in even nowadays Basque. And I forgot to say that "dirua" is with definite article; without it the word is "diru".


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## Outsider

javier8907 said:


> In Basque, the word for money is "dirua". I don't know where it comes from, but I suppose it's also Latin "denarius" or a later Romance or Spanish word (the loss of intervocalical n was usual at earlier stages of the language).





javier8907 said:


> By the way, the switch from o to u is very common in even nowadays Basque. And I forgot to say that "dirua" is with definite article; without it the word is "diru".


That makes an origin in _denarius_ seem quite plausible:

denarius > denariu > dineru > diru

Is the "i" long?


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## javier8907

No, it isn't long, and I don't think there are long vowels in Basque (in fact, it has been suggested that the 5 vowel system of Castilian could come from Basque, as both languages developed in very close areas). Well, I'll correct myself, there are long vowels where a consonant has been lost not long ago, or isn't lost yet, but it's omitted. I can think of "ikaragarria" (terrible), which can be pronounced something like "ikeearri(y)a" or "ikeerri(y)a" (real pronounciation of the words varies from place to place, from one village to the one next to it and between speakers), where ee is a long e rather than two different "e"s (as in Spanish "leer"), which is what you suggested I think, but for example the word "mahaia" (table), I've always heard it pronounced "maia", and in southern dialects that "h" is supposed to have been pronounced until few centuries ago the same as it is in the northern ones.

I would rather suggest a "denarius/denarium/denario..." > denairu(a) > deairu(a)/deiru(a) > diru(a). Anyway, it is mere speculation as I am quite ignorant about historic linguistics.


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## Outsider

javier8907 said:


> I would rather suggest a "denarius/denarium/denario..." > denairu(a) > deairu(a)/deiru(a) > diru(a).


Yes, that makes more sense. I forgot about the metathesis of the ending _-arius/-ariu(m)_.


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## javier8907

I'd say "pecunia" seems related to "pecus" (cattle), which is a valuable in many societies. Probably more intelligent and cultured people than me have written on this topic, anyway.



> In León and Nord-Castille *un patacón *named the copper 10 cent coin used until around 1950, if my memory is any good.



I don't think the 10 cent copper coin was used until so late anywhere. The usual extensive name for it was "perra gorda", which was later applied to the aluminium 10 cent coin which was used until the 1950's. It's quite like what happened to the "maravedí", which inicially was an Andalusi gold coin and ended his life as the coin with nearly the smallest value; a small copper bit.



> In Spain, we still use the adjectives *pecuniario* (m) and *pecuniaria *(f) to refer to things like the value, in terms of money, of land, buildings, art works, etc..., E.g.: "El valor pecuniario del Museo del Prado sería de..."



I wouldn't say "still" as that word is a modern loan from Latin.



> Both, *pataca *and* patacón *were originally one ounce silver coins, scissor cut.
> 
> [...]
> 
> No known relation to the *peso *, as you correctly guessed


Yet I'd swear that a peso was precisely a one ounce silver coin.

Regards


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## Miguel Antonio

For the sake of economy of words, I won't quote from above posts.
May I add for colloquial Spanish in Spain:
- _cuartos_ (Galician _cartos_): money, probably referring to the fourth of - a piece of eight, perhaps?
- _pasta_ (Portuguese _massa_): just like spaghetti 
- _pelas_: an informal way of calling the old pesetas, _¿tienes pelas? _is a colloquial way of asking someone if they have any money on them
- _duro(s): _a _peso *duro*_ was at some time definitely* hard* currency. _Vale muchos duros: _it's worth a lot of money

A _patacón_ was a 10 cent (of a peseta) coin. _Pataca_ is potato in Galician. The name of a unit of currency was given to a "unit of food". In Galicia, the 10 and 5 cent coins were called _can/cadela_ (dog/bitch) because the first ones ever to be issued during the 1st Spanish republic bore the figure of a lion, that folklore interpreted as a dog. _Non teño un can_ in Galician still means "I am penniless".

_Pecunia_ referes to cattle, the more heads you had, the more the *capital* you owned. _Cabedal _in Portuguese means leather, the Spanish cognate _caudal/caudales_ is the vernacular version of capital, and it means money too: _caja de caudales_: strongbox

Can't think of more for now


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## Aoyama

_Pecunia _comes from _pecus _which means (if I am not mistaken) "herd" (hence cattle also) cf. "_vulgum pecus_".
As for 





> - _pasta_ (Portuguese _massa_): just like spaghetti


 meaning money, some related use :
- in French "blé" (wheat), probably from the colour (yellow = gold), but wheat is also a symbol of work and wealth (you find it notably on French coins)
- in English "dough", meaning money, a bit obsolete nowadays ...


> _duro(s): _a _peso *duro*_ was at some time definitely* hard* currency. _Vale muchos duros: _it's worth a lot of money


True, hard can also be linked to *cash* .
French has the expression : *espèces sonnantes et trébuchantes* (literally = noisy and truthworthy "species", trébuchet being a tool used to mint money).


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## Miguel Antonio

Aoyama said:


> French has the expression : *espèces sonnantes et trébuchantes* (literally = noisy and truthworthy "species", trébuchet being a tool used to mint money).


 In Spanish: _dinero contante y sonante _


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## ThomasK

How come we have not focused on _money/ moneta_ ? A little ETY dictionary tells me it refers to the temple of the goddess Iuno Moneta, who - so I read - granted the Romans money when they needed that. (I need to find it or ...create my own ...). But _moneta_ must have been older as it was added as an epitheton...


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## ThomasK

Just a kind of summary in-between : let's focus on *money/ gold/ argent* (although he we cannot avoid a link with *coins*, I suppose, as money refers to 'monnaie', which refers to coins, now, I think) seemed to refer to
- service, duty, debt

- silver (gold ? Copper ?) (French, Hebrew)
- (_denarius_ > ...) ???
- cattle (_pecunia_), if I am not mistaken
- scales
(-shells)
- ruler (_bani_)
- necklaces, rings, ...
- skins
- paper (_papel_)
- coin (_den'gi_, Turkish) // Slavic words based on German _Pfennig // _French_ monnaie // denarius (coin)_
- a weight unit or tool (Japanese, Chinese)


[Additions or corrections welcome !]


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## dudasd

ThomasK said:


> Slavic words based on German _Pfennig _



I'd rather say just "words based on Proto-Germanic _panningaz_" (Proto-Slavic _pěnędzь_, sharing the root with German _pfennig_, English _penny_ etc. - makes me wonder how old is "penny/pence/pennies" as a synonym for "money"). One of the offered etymologies for _panningaz_ is a "piece of cloth" (_pannus_), so maybe it's worth adding cloth as a possibility (only a possibility though).

Also, there is the word _para_ (pl. _pare_ = money in South Slavic languages), which I mentioned before, with possible meanings _piece_; _share, portion_; _reward; pay, repay, debt_ (Persian traced to Avestan and IE). If that's true, that would make a category of an "abstract value" (not a material etalon).

As for the Temple of Juno Moneta ("Juno the Advisor", which supposedly gave name to the coins that were minted there), many etymologists are prone to interpret her attribute as "Moneres", "Unique" in Greek. If that is the case, _money _would probably belong to the "coin" category.


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## djara

Mahaodeh said:


> and was derived from an old (rarely used nowadays) name for the small thin peices on the skin of fishes (don't know the name in english)


"وأول من ضرب الفِلْس عند العرب بنو أمية مقلدين في ذلك قطعة بيزنطية كانت تسمى
 follis 
يرجّح أنها من اللاتينية 
follis 
بمعنى كيس نقود أو من اليونانية 
φολίς 
بمعنى غشاء معدني، علما أن الفلس البزنطي كان من البرنز وتغطيه طبقة رفيعة من الفضة."
Source


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## ThomasK

djara said:


> "وأول من ضرب الفِلْس عند العرب بنو أمية مقلدين في ذلك قطعة بيزنطية كانت تسمى
> follis
> يرجّح أنها من اللاتينية
> follis
> بمعنى كيس نقود أو من اليونانية
> φολίς
> بمعنى غشاء معدني، علما أن الفلس البزنطي كان من البرنز وتغطيه طبقة رفيعة من الفضة."
> Source


Could you be referring to scales, 'schubben' in Dutch?



dudasd said:


> I'd rather say just "words based on Proto-Germanic _panningaz_" (Proto-Slavic _pěnędzь_, sharing the root with German _pfennig_, English _penny_ etc. - makes me wonder how old is "penny/pence/pennies" as a synonym for "money"). One of the offered etymologies for _panningaz_ is a "piece of cloth" (_pannus_), so maybe it's worth adding cloth as a possibility (only a possibility though).
> 
> Also, there is the word _para_ (pl. _pare_ = money in South Slavic languages), which I mentioned before, with possible meanings _piece_; _share, portion_; _reward; pay, repay, debt_ (Persian traced to Avestan and IE). If that's true, that would make a category of an "abstract value" (not a material etalon).
> 
> As for the Temple of Juno Moneta ("Juno the Advisor", which supposedly gave name to the coins that were minted there), many etymologists are prone to interpret her attribute as "Moneres", "Unique" in Greek. If that is the case, _money _would probably belong to the "coin" category.


INteresting additions! I will mention "piece of cloth" as a potential source of a "money" word... 

"para": the link between pieces, sharing and paying is interesting. It would be a side thread, but one could wonder whether this link can be found in other languages...

Money & unique & coin: could you explain the link again. can you explain how you relate uniqueness and coins? I'd think deities and uniqueness would be more plausible as a link. Or...? 

But very interesting ideas, food for thought!


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## dudasd

I suspect it could be a reverse quasi-connection of a later date. As you already know, each of the gods in the Greek and Roman pantheon had an attribute (or more than one): Athena Pallas, Jupiter Omnipotens etc. Whatever be the origin of Juno Moneta's attribute - Latin _monēre_ (to remind, advise, warn, instruct) or Greek _μονήρης _(unique) - she probably had had it long before the mint came to existance, and it makes sense to suppose the mint was named after her. If the mint had belonged to a temple of Jupiter Omnipotens, who knows, maybe we would be saying "omney" instead of "money" nowadays.


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## djara

ThomasK said:


> Could you be referring to scales, 'schubben' in Dutch?


No, I was answering a post that claimed the Arabic word "fils", meaning penny and, in the plural, money in general, came from another Arabic word meaning fish scales.
What I posted was that the Arabic word "fils" probably came from either Latin "follis" or byzantine Greek φολίς, the first "fils" being a copy of a byzantine coin.


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## Roxxxannne

As I recall, _monnaie, money _and similar words come from Latin _moneta_, which comes from _Juno Moneta (Juno the adviser/warner).  _Her temple in Rome was near the place where coins were minted.
And _mint _(in the sense of money, not the herb) is from the same Latin source.


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## ThomasK

djara said:


> No, I was answering a post that claimed the Arabic word "fils", meaning penny and, in the plural, money in general, came from another Arabic word meaning fish scales.
> What I posted was that the Arabic word "fils" probably came from either Latin "follis" or byzantine Greek φολίς, the first "fils" being a copy of a byzantine coin.


Well, that is how I had understood it... Thanks!


Roxxxannne said:


> As I recall, _monnaie, money _and similar words come from Latin _moneta_, which comes from _Juno Moneta (Juno the adviser/warner).  _Her temple in Rome was near the place where coins were minted.
> And _mint _(in the sense of money, not the herb) is from the same Latin source.


How about Dudasd's reference to Greek _μονήρης _(unique) in #72? Could that make sense, you think?


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## ThomasK

Aoyama said:


> French has the expression : *espèces sonnantes et trébuchantes* (literally = noisy and truthworthy "species", trébuchet being a tool used to mint money).


But no link with stumbling, _trébucher_, then?


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## Roxxxannne

ThomasK said:


> Well, that is how I had understood it... Thanks!
> 
> How about Dudasd's reference to Greek _μονήρης _(unique) in #72? Could that make sense, you think?


Thanks for pointing that out -- somehow I missed that post even thought it was right in front of me.

I agree with Dudasd that we can imagine that the stuff the mint made was named for the 'neighborhood' it was in.  And I'm willing to believe that Juno's epithet has to do with uniqueness (I based my statement about Juno and warning/advising on something I picked up probably 40 years ago).  

But it's not clear to me how the meaning of Juno's epithet relates to an intrinsic quality of coins. Did the Romans put the mint where they did because they thought money had some relation to a quality of Juno that was visible in her epithet? Coins of a particular minting all adhere to a standard (supposedly) and they all have the same 'logo.'  Any single coin is not unique.  And since all sorts of city-states had been producing coins in Greece for more than 200 years before the mint near the Juno Moneta temple existed, there was nothing all that unique about the idea of coinage.  I'm inclined to think that the etymology of Moneta had no relationship to any quality of 'coin.'  But I'd be happy to be shown otherwise!


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## Penyafort

Outsider said:


> Portuguese _*dinheiro*_ and Spanish _*dinero*_ are from Latin _*denarius*_, the name of a Roman unit of currency.


Same thing for the Catalan. But unlike in Portuguese or Spanish, in Catalan the common thing is to use it in the plural: *diners*.

In Balearic Catalan, *doblers *is also used, which comes from another medieval coin. As the name reveals, the origin was due to the double value of one _diner_. 

Old Catalan coins also included the *sous*, from Latin SOLIDU, but the use of it for 'money in general' is restricted to very local areas, its usual meaning being 'salary'.

One mentioned before, *patacons*, exists in Catalan too but is seen as colloquial, dialectal or outdated. It seems to have covered a wide area (Western Iberia-Eastern Iberia-South of France-Italy). 

Much more common in modern colloquial Catalan would be *calés*, which comes from the same origin as the Caló/Calé name for Southwestern European gypsies, meaning 'dark, black' in Romani. It comes from the adjective given to the copper coins, in clear opposition to the 'white' or _parnó_ ones, made of silver (and which would give _parné_, a Spanish colloquial word for money)



javier8907 said:


> I read that "peseta" comes not from French but from a similar Catalan development (as the first coinage of a peseta coin, this is, one fifth of a peso, happened in Barcelona in 1805, so it's likely that that particular coin got a Catalan name). It was much later that pesetas became the official monetary unit.


And much more logical, as the diminutive of _*peça *_('piece' in Catalan) is _*peceta*_, which sounds like the Spanish _peseta_, while in French it would be _piécette_.


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## ThomasK

I very much welcome the new contributions! 

@Roxxxannne: you seem to be a monetologist ;-) or no, a numismatician, I guess. You seem to know that there were coins before the introduction of minting in the temple. I had bene thinking of associations of the sacredness of money (its "holy"and therefore uniqueness guaranteeing value, transcending barter systems of private coins) with deities... Was the need for a sacred guarantee of the money value only felt later on?

Just guessing, hopefully guessing educatedly...


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## Roxxxannne

ThomasK said:


> I very much welcome the new contributions!
> 
> @Roxxxannne: you seem to be a monetologist ;-) or no, a numismatician, I guess. You seem to know that there were coins before the introduction of minting in the temple. I had bene thinking of associations of the sacredness of money (its "holy"and therefore uniqueness guaranteeing value, transcending barter systems of private coins) with deities... Was the need for a sacred guarantee of the money value only felt later on?
> 
> Just guessing, hopefully guessing educatedly...


I'm not a numismatist, but I was trained in ancient Greek archaeology.  There were coins in the ancient Mediterranean world (the first being, as I recall, Lydia in Asia Minor; also the Persians were minting coins in the mid-6th century) about 300 years or so before the Juno Moneta mint went into operation.  Greek-city states had their own coinages, and coins were also minted in southern Italy before the early 3rd century.

In Greek and Roman society, government was inextricably linked with religion, so there's probably some connection between their kind of 'sacred' and money.  But as you know their idea of religion was much different from ours: it had more to do with what one does than what one believes, for instance.  I don't know anything about Roman coinage (even in the broad sense, not just coins minted in Rome), but I do know that Greek coins had images on them that were connected to a deity or a narrative (aka myth) associated with the city-state that minted the coins: e.g. Athena's owls on Athenian coins, the labyrinth on coins of Knossos, Pegasus on coins of Corinth (Bellerophon, a king of Corinth, tamed Pegasus in Corinth).


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## ThomasK

Mine was a wild (...) guess based on "uniqueness" but so there might be some truth in it. It suddenly reminded me of swearing, or taking oaths: they are still taken on the Bible in some countries, I think: God as a guarantee of truth...


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## Roxxxannne

I suppose one thing to think about is whether the Romans in 269 BCE (rather than people like Livy and Cicero) thought that Juno Moneta's name came from the Latin monere or the Greek _μονήρης _and also whether they, in 269, thought that her epithet had anything to do with the idea of 'money.'

I don't yet see that uniqueness, as in Juno's epithet, has to do with money in classical antiquity_.  _The inhabitants of the city of Rome knew well that coins were being minted in the eastern Mediterranean, so coins and the minting of coins was not a unique thing. And the Romans in general practiced syncretism, assimilating non-Roman gods to their gods (for instance the gods of NW Europe)_; _Moneta was a goddess who existed on her own in Italy before the Juno-in-Rome acquired her name as an epithet. So Moneta was for some time apparently not associated with money.  

Could you explain how God as a guarantee of truth is similar to "Juno the Unique"? I'm confused.

It would be good to know what was on the site of the mint in Rome before the mint was built.  But apparently we don't know even where the temple was. I wonder if there was a blacksmithing or metalworking 'industrial zone' in Rome in the 200s BCE....


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## Michael Zwingli

ThomasK said:


> Lat. pecunia cattle, I believe


Yes! Latin _pecū_ ("domestic animal"), plural _ pecua_ ("cattle") is a cognate (actually, a doublet) of Old Frankish (and Proto-Germanic) *_fehu _("cattle"), whence "feudal" and "feudalism". Cool beans, eh?


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## ThomasK

Roxxxannne said:


> I don't yet see that uniqueness, as in Juno's epithet, has to do with money in classical antiquity_.  _The inhabitants of the city of Rome knew well that coins were being minted in the eastern Mediterranean, so coins and the minting of coins was not a unique thing. And the Romans in general practiced syncretism, assimilating non-Roman gods to their gods (for instance the gods of NW Europe)_; _Moneta was a goddess who existed on her own in Italy before the Juno-in-Rome acquired her name as an epithet. So Moneta was for some time apparently not associated with money.
> 
> Could you explain how God as a guarantee of truth is similar to "Juno the Unique"? I'm confused.
> 
> It would be good to know what was on the site of the mint in Rome before the mint was built.  But apparently we don't know even where the temple was. I wonder if there was a blacksmithing or metalworking 'industrial zone' in Rome in the 200s BCE....


I am afraid I am thinking in some peculiar way. I meant something like the idea of a unique currency. Countries might have several currencies, some not controlled by the state or by some other organ guaranteeing its value (the way crypto currencies are not controlled by one organisation, if I am right). Deities might perhaps guarantee that kind of "uniqueness", so I thought. But I might not be thinking "straight" or something the like, ...


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