I was told that it was originally created by combining a U and S.
Any truth to this?
Absolutely.
Overlay the two characters and truncate the bottom portion of the “U”.
Muad’Dib
Member
Registered: Jul 2000
Posts: 4
Actually, Absolutely not. Cecil the Magnificent reviewed this in Return of the Straight Dope – the correct answer is that the $ came from writing ps as an abbreviation for pesos. Cecil’s column is online at What does the S in the dollar sign represent?
The excellent website http://www.wordorigins.org favours the theory about the scroll wrapped around the column. If you look at a picture of an ancient peso (here: http://www.jassco.com/spreale.htm ), the similarity of this to the modern $ sign strikes you at first glance, so I personally would prefer this theory. Maybe lost forever in history which one is the true background.
An interesting book Made in America by Bill Bryson has it that it is a form of a scroll wrapped around the pillars of Hercules as seen on old Spanish pieces of eight. One of the problems in coming up with a new currency for the newly founded country was the fact that so many different people had colonised America and the surrounding land that any number of coins were still in use from different European countries. This is why Americans have “pennies” as in Britain even though the two currencies were once so different.
Bryson in spite of his problems possibly has the correct source. At least, the current best theory. But don’t place too much faith in all of his derivations.