schwrtze@csd2.UUCP (Eric Schwartz group) (07/02/85)
The recent poster is correct; 'dollar' comes from 'thaler', short for 'Joachimsthaler'. Joachimsthal was the site of much silver mining in the fifteenth century and the first well-known large silver coins, which set a standard for all the dollars, crowns, and pieces of eight minted for hundreds of years. Of course such silver coins are no longer minted for circulation (anywhere at all?). The silver dollar was last minted for circulation in the U.S. in 1935. There were plans for a renewed mintage with the 1921-1935 Peace design in 1964, and some specimens were actually produced, but I think the rising price of silver quashed them. Pieces of eight, you ask? Yes. Many countries produced crowns or silver dollars of about the same size and value, denominated in the local currency. The dominant minter of such coins in the eighteenth century was Spain with her colonies, especially Mexico. The Spanish coins carried the denomination eight reales. Subsidiary coins of two and four reales were also current. They were in fact legal tender in the United States until 1857. The phrase 'two bits' meaning a quarter derives from this source too. A friend of mine was doing some work on the walls of an old building here in New York last year, and found a four-real piece wedged in a nook or perhaps cranny.