# Nicknames for monetary denominations and their origins?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nicknames-for-monetary-denominations-and-their-origins/153499>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 7, 2003, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nicknames-for-monetary-denominations-and-their-origins/153499 "2003-02-07T17:12:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 21

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**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\
**Post date:** [February 8, 2003, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nicknames-for-monetary-denominations-and-their-origins/153499/21 "2003-02-08T02:54:19Z")

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**Bob T** said

> [@](#):
>
> I believe the Master has spoken on this, but in the old days (before paper money), people would have dollar coins. But few people would have smaller denomination coins. So you would just start cutting up the dollar coin into smaller pieces to make change.

That’s not what Dave Wilton’s site said and it’s also just not true. I’m sure I contributed to more than one thread on here about that misconception.

The fanciful idea about cutting a dollar-sized silver coin, such as the 8-real of Spain, into smaller pieces for change just isn’t supported by the evidence. First, the Spanish struck denominations of 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 4, and 8 reals. . The 2 real was equal to about a quarter dollar in US money. It was called “two bits”, where “bit” referred to a small thing. If the practice of cutting silver dollar sized coins into smaller pieces was prevalent, then one would expect a number of these small pieces to exist. They don’t.

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