Decided to look it up.
Why do we put the $ before the numbers?

This question popped up on Quora. It's something I've often wondered about but never took the time to look it up. Now I've taken the time, and I know part of the answer. There are lots of discussions in various forums, but all seem to be conjectures and guesses.

In the 1812 ledgers from the Missoury Fur Company, the ledger entries have the letter P or S after the number, represented within the column by ditto marks, but the sum on each column (here a sum carried forward) has the Pesos symbol in front of the amount:



The use of specific symbols is relatively recent. According to wiki, the pound sign seems to have started in the 1600s.

The earliest preserved English ledger is the pipe rolls of Lancashire in the 1100s. One item with the translation and explanation, from a 1902 book:

Idem vicecomes reddit Compotum de lxvj. li. et xiij. s. et iiij.d . de Communi Assisa Comitatus de Lancastra, pro defaltis et miseri cordiis. In thesauro lxj .li . et viij . d . Et debet c. et xij . s. et viij . d .

The Sheriff renders an account of £66 13s . 4d ., arising from a general Assize of the County of Lancaster, for defaults and amercements, whereby it appears that this sum was not the result of an Eyre of the Justices, but was a composition or general fine, assessed by competent persons, to discharge the county from liability on account of various negligences, purprestures and trespasses within the widely extended forest lands of Lancaster. The Sheriff paid £61 Os . 8d . into the Exchequer and owed £5 12s. 8d . on balance.

Translating only the numbers:

lxvj. li. et xiij. s. et iiij.d.

becomes

66 li. and 13 s. and 4 d.

Li = libri or pounds, s = solidi or shillings, d = denarii or pence.

Pure conjecture: The £ symbol might have arisen, or become popular, to avoid reading li as 51? S and D wouldn't have been confusing, so they didn't need substitutes. (D means 500, but it was very rarely used.) BUT: Any confusion seems unlikely, since humans are extremely good at 'code-shifting', and bookkeepers have especially well-trained bimetral symbol vision.

At that time all of the units were simple abbreviations, not symbols, and all were after the numbers just as in speech, both English and Latin. (Some adjectives and articles were after the noun in Latin, but numbers were before the noun.)

This book of Worcestershire county records comes close to pinning down the transition point, which agrees with the mention in Wikipedia.

These two passages from English court documents were recorded and 'transliterated' by the same author.

1591:



1616:



Records are continuous and dense between these two years, but items with money amounts are sparse. I couldn't find a closer pair with money. In 1591 the units are all abbreviations, and Latin phrases are vestigial. In 1616 the whole text is English and pounds are £.

The author doesn't discuss terminology, so we can't see WHY the change happened, only WHEN. Presumably we can trust that he was consistent.

Incidentally, many of the items in these records read just like modern police blotters. OCD Karens complaining about trivial violations of etiquette, drunks doing what drunks always do. The one I quoted from 1616 shows that privately run prisons haven't changed in 400 years.

Linguistic sidenote: England was under Roman rule from about 50 AD to 400 AD. By 1100 the Romans had been gone for 700 years, but the ruling class was still writing in Latin. That's impressive permanence and persistence. Advantage: You don't need explicit encryption or secrecy when the commoners can't read or understand what the rulers are saying among themselves. Question: Were there commoners who quietly learned how to read and understand Latin, and used the skill to help other commoners prepare for the next psychopathic STOMP from the insane rulers? Vicilici?

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Jail mode

  ¶ 8:34 AM