# British Money **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 26, 2009, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231 "2009-10-26T22:23:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/121 "2009-11-01T17:14:24Z")
> [@Cardinal](#): > > There are 2 different dollar coins in America that are official currency. > > The Susan B. Anthony dollar was introduced in the 70s, and suffered greatly as the public was mostly unable to distinguish between this and the common quarter. Both were very similarly sized and colored, and both had ridged edges. > > The more recent golden George Washington dollar coin somehow never took off. I think I last got one a few years ago in change from a post office stamp machine. > > Ha! Remember buying stamps to send actual letters! I haven’t sent a postal letter in a few months. I probably use 5 a year. They have to use a different method of distribution. Maybe the mint will have to cut off all paper singles entirely. > > Then the real whining will start… Don’t handle very much cash eh? The Susan B. Anthony was used until 1999, when it was replaced by the Sacagawea dollar. I guess they’re still minting those, although at least for the next several years, it has been supplemented with the Presidental coin program. Yes, there are Washington dollars, but there also Adams, Jefferson, et al. dollars. Polk is the most recent, and Cleveland gets two because he served nonconcurrent terms. Also, he was cloned after a tragic threshing accident. None of the dollars really took off, Anthony because it looks like a quarter as you note. It seems that the relative rarity of the President dollars means that people hoard them whenever they come out. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/122 "2009-11-01T18:02:31Z")
There have been several U.S. dollar coins over the years, none of which have, in recent years, been used much in everyday circulation, as **thelurkinghorror** notes. In my lifetime they’ve included the Eisenhower, the Susan B. Anthony, the Sacagawea, and the current Presidential series. Here’s more: [Dollar coin (United States) - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_coin_%28United_States%29) ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/123 "2009-11-01T18:06:22Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > How did the names come to be used as English abbreviations? Benefits of a classical education, dear boy. ---
**Author:** ![Dublin11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Dublin11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dublin11)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/124 "2009-11-01T19:43:09Z")
> [@manila](#): > > 111 posts and am I really the first to recall the “maggie”? a name adopted in the eighties and nineties, for the then new “gold-coloured” one-pound coin, because, ‘it’s brassy, two-faced and worthless but thinks it’s a sovereign’ > > Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, had a nauseating tendency to apply some of the more regal characteristics of Her Majesty ( “we are a grandmother!” she anounced following her daughter Carol giving birth) Nearly right. Carol Thatcher has no children. Her twin brother Mark has children and it was the birth of his first child that prompted his mother to say that. ---
**Author:** ![Bisected8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a4c791/32.png) [@Bisected8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bisected8)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/125 "2009-11-01T19:54:31Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > The more I think about this, the odder it seems. Were the Roman coins ever used at the same time as pounds, shillings and pence? Did their names hang on as generic terms for coins after the Romans left Britain? How did the names come to be used as English abbreviations? Because being able to speak Latin was, is and will continue to be for a (short) while a sign of a good education. _Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur_\*. \*Or my personal favorite “Cogito ergo ustulo” ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/126 "2009-11-01T20:14:07Z")
> [@Dublin11](#): > > Nearly right. > Carol Thatcher has no children. Her twin brother Mark has children and it was the birth of his first child that prompted his mother to say that. Could you elaborate on that? I’m not trying to trip you up. I would genuinely like to know if there is some situation in which old-fashioned etiquette demands that you phrase it that way. I have never heard the Mark Thatcher explanation before. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/127 "2009-11-01T20:21:12Z")
Oh wait, you just mean that it was Mark’s child, not Carol’s, that led to her to make that barking mad statement. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2009, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/128 "2009-11-01T23:18:53Z")
Also, the “maggie” thing was only ever a “clever” joke made up in the media. Nobody actually ever referred to pound coins as “maggies” in real life. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/129 "2009-11-02T02:19:51Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > It seems that the relative rarity of the President dollars means that people hoard them whenever they come out. Or, it more likely means that the average person doesn’t want a dollar coin, has no interest in having one in their pocket, and therefore they sit either in the bank or the vaults of the Federal Reserve. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/130 "2009-11-02T04:50:35Z")
Quite true. If we’re going to have dollar coins gain wide acceptance in this country - and although I’m not personally against it, I think it would only be with great bitching and moaning from the vast majority of my fellow citizens - the Treasury will have to stop printing and also gradually withdraw one-dollar bills from circulation, and businesses will have to set up vending machines, mass transit ticket machines, etc. to accept them. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/131 "2009-11-02T05:15:44Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > The term “denarius” was used in formal documents (in Latin) for the Anglo-Saxon _sceats_ which were the origin of the silver penny. I am unclear on whether Latin _libra_ first meant a weight or the scales used to weigh it, but it early came to represent a measure of weight that in England came to represent one pound. The money value “pound” came from the fact that 240 silver denarii taken togethr weighed one pound Troy weight, hence “one pound [of] sterling [silver].” TTBOMK, the shilling came from the Danelaw, where it had the Nordic name _skilling_, and was equated with the Roman measure _solidus_, as one element in the medieval writers’ efforts to find Latin terms with which to refer to Germanic institutions. (For example, the _eorlesmoot_ (And I may be off on the Anglo-Saxon there) was the local _eorl_ meeting with the chief landholders of his county. After the Danish and Norman invasions, and scribes rendering the overlay of institutions into Latin, this gave rise to the _concilium comitiae_, which in turn became the modern “county council.”) The skilling was, however, money of account until Elizabethan-Jacobean times, when a coin in that denomination was finally struck. Cool! Thank you! ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231/132 "2009-11-02T08:13:19Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > Oh wait, you just mean that it was Mark’s child, not Carol’s, that led to her to make that barking mad statement. Except that I think it was not so much “barking mad” as “lost her way mid-sentence”, having started out meaning to say “we {Denis and I} are grandparents”. Mrs T famously got by on four hours sleep a day anyway; how much she’d had while waiting for the sprog to be born is anyone’s guess. And yes, the “maggie” nickname was only ever a piece of Leftist snark, of which there was plenty all through the Eighties; it was never common parlance the way “a quid” or “five bob” was. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-money/515231.md?page=6)