The $ sign: Origin from Pillars of Hercules or the peso?

Where does the dollar sign come from? My 9-year-old daughter asked me this excellent question recently. Most abbreviations and symbols are fairly straight forward. We use Mr. to abbreviate mister and 3D for three-dimensional.

The symbol © lets us know that something is under copyright and ™ tells us what we are seeing is trade marked. Some are less clear but easily traced, such the abbreviation for pound (lb) stemming from the Latin ‘libra pondo’ which translates ‘a pound by weight.’  So how did the symbol for dollar come to be an S with a slashes through it?

One theory, now largely debunked, was made popular by Ayn Rand in her 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged. In the novel one character explains to another that the symbol was originally a U superimposed over an S and stood for the United States. The U eventually lost its bottom curve giving us the symbol we now recognize today.

The problem with this theory is there is evidence that the symbol was in use prior to the founding of the United States. Some who prefer the US theory suggest that it could have been an abbreviation for ‘units of silver’ as opposed to United States.

Others think the symbol may have come from the Pillars of Hercules featured on the Spanish coat of arms and silver coins. The pillars were wrapped in a banner resembling an S. An S with a slash through it to represent the pillars could have been used as a short hand way of referring to the coin.

A more likely theory also has a Spanish origin. The ‘peso de ocho reales’ (‘piece of eight’), or peso for short, was legal tender in the United States through 1857. The peso was often abbreviated by merchants as P^S. Eventually the S would become superimposed over the P, with the P later losing its curve, giving us $.

The symbol as we now know it, started to appear in manuscripts in the 1770s. By 1785, the symbol had been officially adopted by the United States. Today the dollar sign ($) is so well known that it is often used as a stand alone symbol for all money or wealth in general. It is strange to think that the actual origins of such a prominent symbol have been lost to history.

Crytal Kelly is a feature writer for Bizarre Bytes with those unusual facts that you only need to know for Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy or to stump your in-laws.