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Literary Review
In defence of arcana
ANAND
"WORDSPEAK" columns about the origins of some popular words have readers responding in a variety of ways. Some are amazed ("Well, I never imagined it came from... ."), others ask for the roots or etymology of words, expressions or phrases that always intrigued them. One well-meaning reader asked, in a teacher-ish manner (and presumably stentorian voice) if I usually wrote such arcana?
The e-mail of the last kind, hinting at reprimand and reproach, hurt. I considered shaving off my beard, going back to India and retiring in cognito in some ashram in the Kullu valley. But the cost of staying in those ashrams brought me back to reality. Then a saying by William Safire, the doyen of language column writers and an inspiration behind mine, caught my attention: Etymology driven by idle curiosity should be part of a person's education.
That drove the blues away ("the blues" and other colour-related terms will the subject of a future "Wordspeak" column). So here is some more arcana in response to readers' interest sparked by the explanation of the origin of the term "dollar".
Arcana, innovative use of arcane (mysterious, hidden) by the chastising reader, clearly was a take on another popular term Americana. The suffix "-ana" is often used for collected items of information, especially anecdotal or bibliographical. Canadiana, thus, is information related to the history and culture of Canada. By the same linguistic rules, Indiana should be knowledge about India; that, however, is the name of a state in the United States. If people of India, at any time, want to claim the term Indiana as their own, this column will be behind them.
And before I am inundated by e-mails from readers inquiring about the name of that Mid-west U.S. state, it was called so because the land which has become the state of Indiana, was once occupied by Paleo-Indians 10-12 thousand years ago. Historic American Indian tribes also lived on this land, inspiring the state's name — Indiana, the land of Indians.
If thaler (dollar) got its name from the town where it was first minted, the British pound is a testimonial to the times when a coin was the standardised weight of a metal, and the name of the coin reflected the weight in some way. L, symbol for the monetary unit pound, stands for libra, Latin for pound (weight). Some other currencies in which coins got their name from weight are Italian (lira), Turkey (also lira), Greece (drachma) and Israel (shekel). Other "weight" currencies are the peso (from Latin pensum "weight") and its diminutive, the peseta.
The British pound with 100 pence, had until recently 20 shillings and each shilling had 12 pence, like our pre-1957 rupee with 16 annas and each anna divided into four paisa. The symbol for shilling d and for pence s came, respectively, from Latin denarius (tenfold) and sestertius (one-third), but in usage their values were reversed.
Here in North America, although both U.S. and Canadian dollars have 100 cents, a cent is commonly called a penny. This practice goes back to Anglo-Saxon times when the Old English word for money was pening. The Saxon connection is seen in the German currency deutsche mark (DM), which has 100 pfennig (literally, a coin). The Anglo side comes out in those axioms and homilies about money: Penny-wise and pound-foolish; A penny for your thoughts, and such.
Here is some more related arcana: The French franc took its name from an inscription on the coin which followed the name of the king: francorum rex (Latin "king of Franks"). Some other "royal" currencies are the real (Brazil), the rial (Iran, Oman, Yemen), and the riyal (Saudi Arabia) — all stemming from Latin regalis. The dinar (Iraq, Jordan) is a variant of Latin denarius.
Many Commonwealth countries have adopted pound and shilling as the name for their currencies. Similarly, former French possessions, mainly in Africa, use franc as their monetary unit. Rupee is used in countries neighbouring India, in Mauritius and its variants in Maldives (rufiyaa) and Indonesia (rupiah). Former Spanish colonies have clung to peso. The currency of choice, especially among the countries of the Pacific region and in America's backyard, is dollar.
Here is some pain-staking and time-consuming research on $, the dollar sign, and The Hindu readers can say that they read it here first. The sign for peso is also $. At the time of founding of the U.S. in 1776, the Spanish peso coins were circulated in many parts of the world, much as U.S. dollars are today. The peso's abbreviation was p, and its plural was sometimes written as ps, and sometimes the P with a superscript s.
Such usage of superscript to denote abbreviated endings can still be seen when writing 1st or 9th. In the course of time and as a result of the vagaries of handwriting, P became joined with the superscript s, and the peso/dollar sign was born. The $ was also written with two vertical strokes; both these forms are original. The Americans just copied the dominant currency sign of the time.
E-mail the author at anand@journalist.com
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