Australian Dollars. Canadian Dollars. New Zealand Dollars. Hong Kong Dollars. Singapore Dollars. Taiwan New Dollars.
Isn’t that kind of weird? You’d think they’d be pounds or some completely local name.
New Zealand used to have Pounds, Shillings and Pence but changed in 1967.
From this site. http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/currency/money/0060617-04.html
In 1957, a special committee was set up by the Government to take another look at the pros and cons of introducing decimal currency. This paved the way for New Zealand’s move to decimal currency. In August 1963, the Government announced that 10 July 1967 would be `DC Day’, and a massive publicity campaign was organised to smooth the shift from the imperial to decimal system.
Public discussions were held as to what the new decimal unit might be called, and suggestions such as the “kiwi” and the “zeal” were debated before the “dollar” was finally settled upon. Many New Zealanders remember “Mr Dollar”, a cartoon character that symbolised the changeover. On DC Day, dollars and cents replaced pounds, shillings and pence as New Zealand’s units of currency.
Same with Oz, pounds sterling to dollars, and around the same time as the Kiwis. I presume that we were copying the US, as they were the dominant power at the time, as they are now.
As **lambchops ** said, Australia decimalised its currency in 1966. It was intended as a simplification measure, which pretty much meant moving to a dollar made up of 100 cents, rather than a pound made up of 240 pence. At the time though, the then Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, an avowed monarchist, seriously canvassed the option of naming Australia’s new currency the royal.
As others have stated, many Commonwealth countries did use pounds, shillings and pence. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but prior to 1971, the UK used a non-decimal system of currency… Instead of something costing 1.15 (in whatever currency you like, pounds, dollars, rupees, etc.), it might have cost 1 pound, 2 schillings and 3 pence in the UK. That price would appear in ads as 1L, 2s, 3d (for the latin versions of the words). Accounting ledgers had three columns for the different denominations(?) of currency and as you can imagine, it was a nightmare to tally the books and for non-UK citizens to figure it out. The UK ditched this system, but it’s just that Commonweath countries did this before “Mother England”.
When was Taiwan ever a British colony?
I know Formosa was controlled by both the Dutch and the Japanese over the years, but I don’t believe it was ever in the hands of the British–although I wouldn’t be surprised if a few British shells were lobbed its way during the Opium Wars.
I’ll also note that this site gives a history of post-war Taiwanese currency and points out that in Mandarin, the NT$ is known as the yuan and in Taiwanese as the kho·.
It should be noted the Taiwan is not a former British colony. However, there are several other former colonies that do use dollars: Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Fiji, Guyana, Jamaica, Solomon Islands, and Zimbabwe. Plus the East Caribbean dollar which is used by several Caribbean islands, most if not all of which are former British colonies.
Doh! My mistake on Taiwan, I was just looking at a currency list and guessing.
As far as the British islands, they tend to use 1 to 1 USD fixed exchange so it’s pretty obvious why they’re called dollars.
My parents assure me that it was quite simple to do all of the calculations, once you got the hang of it and they were working in the pre-calculator days. It certainly seems confusing to me. There were 12 pence in a shilling, and 20 shillings in a pound. But people seemed happily to deal with threepences, fourpences and sixpences. And then there was the guinea (which was 21 shillings i.e. one pound plus one shilling). For some reason, the prices of certain commodities, such as houses, suits and horses, were always quoted in guineas.
I have vague recollections of the changeover to decimal currency, which occured when I was about 2. I remember my mother exclaiming over the prices of things in shops and claiming that she’d never get used to this “new-fangled money”.
Well, at one time the U.S. used poungs shillings and that other thingy.
Spelling and grammer subject to change without notice.
Canada’s always used the dollar, but I think that’s simply because the dollar was a common name for currency in North America, in both British and Spanish colonies. See the Master’s column: Where did the word “dollar” come from?
Don’t forget Bermuda.
The first Canadian stamps, issued in 1849, were in denominations of 3d, 6d and 12d (1 shilling). Only in 1859 did Canada convert to a decimal system of currency. Stamps and postal history of Canada
Considering the way we are debating changing our flag I’m sure if we were to adopt a new currency today it wouldn’t be called the dollar. In the 60’s we wanted to belong. Now we want to be a little bit special 
Who knows? New Zealand and Australia might both end up with a currency called the Anzac. There’s been some discussion of the concept over the past few years on this side of the Tasman. Personally though, I don’t think it’s likely.
My Dad assured me of the ease of calculations too, but then he worked a bank in Northern Ireland from the 1960’s.
In the Republic of Ireland, what did Punt mean? Was it simply Irish for Pound? I know that they used pence as the basic unit of decimal coins, 100 Irish pence equalling one Punt.
The dollar is an old traditional currency unit from Central Europe. Lots of countries have used dollars in the past. They were all largish silver coins similar in size and silver content to a pre-1935 U.S. silver dollar.
Dollar did use to be a slang expression for a crown, didn’t it? So it certainly seems reasonable that former English colonies might have opted to declare their national currency to be a dollar.
Good point - and it’s still a British colony. But it’s dollar is pegged to the US$, simply because that’s the economy with which most Bermudian trade has always been with.
Yes, it was just the Irish name for ‘pound’. It was very rarely called ‘punt’ in English.
Until 1927 Ireland used English coins. Thereafter their coins were the same size, weight and denominations as the English ones, to the extent that you occasionally got one in your change that someone had passed off on to you (quite useless). The £Irish was pegged to the value of sterling at par for many years, until 1979 when Ireland joined the ‘Snake’ (European Monetary System that was a prelude to the Euro)
see http://www.centralbank.ie/data/site/spring8.pdf
There’s a true biography or memoir of a free black American who lived in the Northeast, but somehow got shanghaied into slavery down south. He was a musician–a fiddler, if that will help someone remember the story, which was televised on PBS years ago. I read the original book, and was surprised that shillings were being used and quoted in prices even though this was decades after the revolution.
Regarding the OP, besides being well known as a large silver “thaler” in Central Europe, a “dollar” was a slang term for a crown, or one fourth of a pound. Even one pound was quite a sum in colonial days, so it would have been natural for people to quote smaller prices in all sorts of fractional coins, such as florins, shillings–and dollars.