

vii.] INSTITUTE OF BANKERS. 221 



derived from monere, to warn, because it was built on 

 the spot where Manlius heard the Gauls approaching to 

 the attack of the city. " Coin " is probably from the 

 Latin word cuneus, a die or stamp. Many coins are 

 merely so called from their weight, as for instance our 

 pound, the French livre, Italian lira ; others from the 

 metal, as the " aureus " ; the " rupee " from the Sanscrit 

 "rupya," silver; others from the design, as the angel, 

 the testoon, from teste, a head ; others again from the 

 head of the state, as the sovereign, the crown ; others 

 from the name of the monarch, such as the Daric, from 

 Darius, the Philip, Louis d'or, or the Napoleon. The 

 name "obol" was from obeliscus, on account of their 

 form ; six making a " drachma " or handful, being as 

 much as the hand could grasp. 



The dollar or thaler is short for the Joachimsthaler, 

 or money of the Joachims valley in Bohemia, where 

 these coins were first struck in the sixteenth century. 

 Guineas were called after the country from which the 

 gold was obtained, and the " franc " is an abbreviation 

 of the inscription Francorum Rex. The " sou " is from 

 the Latin solidus. The word shilling appears to be de- 

 rived from a root signifying to divide ; and in other 

 cases the name indicates the fraction of some larger coin, 

 as the denarius, halfpenny, farthing, cent., and mil. The 

 pound was originally not a coin, but a weight, and 

 comes from the Latin pondus. Our pound was origin- 

 ally a pound of silver, which was divided into 240 

 pennies. The origin of the word penny is unknown. 

 Some have derived it from pendo, to weigh, but this 

 does not seem very satisfactory. Our word " sterling " 

 is said to go back to the time of the Conquest, but the 



