How did the cent...
Snoodle
Posts: 80
come to be called a penny? Is it a spin on the "pence"?
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Snoodle
Posts: 80
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<< <i>come to be called a penny? Is it a spin on the "pence"? >>
Actually the name of the British coin is "penny." More than one penny is "pence."
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<< <i>So it is improper to say that, 'I have a bunch of old pennys." >>
Yes, but it is proper to say, 'I have a bunch of old pennies." But that's only if you're talking about British pennies.
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<< <i>How about "dime"? Cent, quarter, and half seem pretty obvious, but dime....? >>
The decimal system was invented by Simon Stevin van Brugghe (1548-1620) and first published in a pamphlet, Be Thiende, in 1585. The French translation was entitled La Disme. Robert Norton’s 1608 translation: Disme: The art of tenths, or, Decimall arithmeticke introduced the idea to England. It was from these European roots that the concept of tenths, or “La Disme”—anglicized later to “dime”—immigrated to America
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<< <i>That name came from Britain's One Penny coin back in colonial times. >>
Except for the fact that Britain did not HAVE a one Penny coin at that time and had not had one for over a hundred years. And even when they had had a penny coin, it was a silver coin not a copper one. When they did get a copper penny in 1797, four years AFTER the cent came out, the british penny was larger than a half dollar and almost twice as thick as a silver dollar. The US cent was actually most like the half penny. Why it would become known with the name of a non-existant denomination of twice its value?
I have wondered this question myself for some time now but I think I may have found the answer this week. At the time, and for some time previously, each state had had their own curency or "money of account". In Pennsylvania the spanish milled dollar was worth 90 pence in Pennsylvania currency. Now PA had one of the largest populations of all the states, it was the seat of the government, and that was where the mint was and where most of the new coins were circulating. The closeness of value between the cent at 100 to the dollar and the PA penny at 90 to the dollar, and with the peoples familiarity with the PA penny could easily have lead to the cent coin being called a penny.
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<< <i>come to be called a penny? Is it a spin on the "pence"? >>
Actually the name of the British coin is "penny." More than one penny is "pence." >>
I beg to differ. England coined a "penny" for well over 100 years, and switched to "new pence" a couple of decades ago when it shrunk the old large penny to a smaller "cent" type coin. When US coinage began in 1793, the "cent" designation was used, perhaps to distinguish from the former mother country's penny.