Joachimsthaler

In 1519, a rich silver vein was discovered near the town of Joachimsthal (Joachim's Valley) in Bohemia, modern-day Jachymov in the Czech Republic. The local lord, Count Stephan Schlick, began minting large silver coins from the mine's output. These coins were called Joachimsthalers — 'coins from Joachim's Valley.' The name was immediately shortened to thaler. The valley's name became the coin's name. The coin's name would eventually become the world's.

The thaler spread across Europe as a standard silver trade coin. It was large, reliable, and widely accepted. The Dutch called it the daalder. The Scandinavians called it the daler. The Spanish called their large silver coin the peso de a ocho (piece of eight), which circulated alongside thalers. When Dutch and English colonists in North America needed a word for the Spanish silver coins that dominated colonial trade, they used 'dollar' — the English version of daalder/thaler.

The United States adopted 'dollar' as its currency name in 1792, on the recommendation of Thomas Jefferson, who chose the word because Americans were already using it for the Spanish pieces of eight they handled daily. The Coinage Act of 1792 defined the dollar in terms of the Spanish milled dollar's silver content. A Bohemian valley named the American currency.

The word dollar now circulates as the currency name of over twenty countries: the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar, the Australian dollar, the Hong Kong dollar, the Singapore dollar, and more. Each 'dollar' traces its name back through English, Dutch, and German to a silver mine in a Bohemian valley that was exhausted centuries ago. The mine is closed. The word is the most widely used currency name on earth.