Talk:Solidus (coin)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of the WikiProject Numismatics, which is an attempt to facilitate the categorization and creation of accurate and formal Numismatism-related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate please visit the project page, where you can join and see a list of open tasks to help with.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as mid-importance on the importance scale.

"Until decimalisation in the United Kingdom, the letter s, from solidus, was used to represent a shilling, worth 1/20th of a Pound Sterling."

I don't wish to seem ignorant, but why do we think 's' comes from 'solidus' and not from 'shilling'? DJ Clayworth 18:54, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• A good question. Pre decimalisation the UK used pounds, shilings and pence, all of which were denoted by latin derived symbols: £ d and s.

£ (a decorated L) from libra, the Latin word for "pound", d for denarius, and s for solidus. I guess this dates right back to when the Roman currency was used, although the pound would presumably have referred only to the weight, since I don't think there was a roman coin of that name. 80.43.216.81 02:02, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

• • I should also have mentioned that the French used the same symbols, with the same derivation, except in their case L d and s stood for livre, sol (or, later, sou) and denier 80.43.216.81 02:12, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

• • • It seems more plausible to me that the symbols £sd were derived from livre, sou and denier rather than the Latin originals. Nik42 06:29, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dumpy issues

An apparently good-faith edit added the peculiar phrase "dumpy issues from the Byzantine Empire". Google search for "dumpy issues" turns up no other uses of this phrase, so I expect it is not standard. Can some numismatist perhaps figure out what was meant here and change it to something more intelligible? -- Dominus 15:39, 28 July 2005 (UTC)