In a Word: The First Dollar

Senior managing editor and logophile Andy Hollandbeck reveals the sometimes surprising roots of common English words and phrases. Remember: Etymology tells us where a word comes from, but not what it means today.

In the early 1500s, a rich vein of silver was discovered near the Bohemian village of Joachimsthal. I don’t mean bohemian in the modern sense of an unconventional lifestyle; at the time, this village and its silver were part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, which today is the Czech Republic, or Czechia.

Joachimsthal was named for Jesus Christ’s grandpa, Saint Joachim, father of Mary. Thal in German means “valley,” which you might remember if you’ve read my etymological exploration of Neanderthal. Joachimsthal, then, means “(Saint) Joachim’s valley.”

By 1518, the Konstantin mine was up and running, and a mint built onsite was producing large silver coins for the King of Bohemia. That teenaged king (Louis I of Bohemia and Louis II of Hungary) had hoped that this influx of silver could be used to help protect his kingdoms from the threat of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan.

It didn’t.

Louis died in 1526, and Bohemia fell under the rule of the Habsburgs. Joachimsthal continued producing coins, which were called Joachimsthalern in the plural and Joachimsthaler in the singular — literally “from Joachim’s valley.” These silver coins were well-circulated throughout Europe, but more importantly, at least for an etymological discussion, so did the coin’s name.

Joachimsthaler became a sort of linguistic template for other types of silver coins. Introduced in the 1560s, the German Reichsthaler (“of the valley of the realm”) became the dominant silver coin throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Other national silver coins took similar names, like the Dutch Republic’s rijksdaalder and Norway and Denmark’s rigsdaler. Before long, because we humans like to simplify, thaler or (from Low German dialects) daler was used to refer to any silver coin, including among English speakers.

Now we jump across the pond to early America. The silver coin that early colonists would have come into contact the most with was the Spanish piece of eight, or peso. Since the late 16th century, Americans colloquially called these dollars, and they were legal tender in the States even after the American Revolution, until the Coinage Act of 1857 ended their legal status (and eliminated the half-penny).

But dollar didn’t become official in the United States until 1786. The Congress of the Confederation (the U.S. legislative body that existed between the end of the Revolutionary War in 1781 until the create of the U.S. Congress in 1789) wanted to separate from England in every way, including linguistically. They chose the word dollar — to replace pound sterling — as the new country’s base monetary unit.

Today, a number of countries that were formerly British colonies now have their own dollar instead, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a few other small countries. Surprisingly, since 2000, the U.S. dollar has also been the primary unit of currency in Ecuador.

By the way, Joachimsthal is now known as Jáchymov in Czech, and that original silver mine is still producing. In 1530, it was renamed the Svornost (“unity”) mine, and it produced not only silver but cobalt and, until 1962, uranium. In 1964 it was given to a local health spa as a source for radioactive water, which, apparently, can be a good thing for some people to soak in.