特別推薦：2006圣誕特輯

英語中不同面值的硬幣有不同的名字，這一點常常讓中國人頭痛，尤其是去國外讀書和旅游的時候。下面就給大家介紹一下這些名字的來歷，讓你不再困惑。

Most coins are derived from Latin words. They are named after people, places, or things.

Even the word coin translates from the Latin "cuneus," meaning wedge, and was thusly named because early coins resembled the wedges used to coin coins. The cent, from the Latin "centum," meaning one hundred, the dime, from the Latin "decimus," meaning tenth, and the French franc, from the Latin "Franconium Rex," meaning King of the Franks, are all examples of the naming of money, the root of all evil which translates from the Latin word "mona," meaning to warn!

On to a weightier manner in which people named coins: by a scale. The English pound, translates from the Latin "pondo," meaning pound, orfrom the Latin "libra pondo," meaning a pound of weight. This method of naming coins weighed heavily in naming of the Spanish peso and of the Italian lira.

A sense of fairness dictates that some coins bear the names of the metals of which they are composed. Thus, the nickel is made of nickel. Location, not Latin, sometimes figures prominently into the naming of sum (oops!), some coins. The dollar, not always in paper form, originally hailed from the silver mines of Bohemia, where Bohemians extracted silver for the coins, and minted them in the town of Joachimsthal. Realizing that the coin they termed the Joachimsthaler, short of lacking in creativity, was rather lengthy, the Bohemian friends lost the head of the name, and kept the tail, with the end result being the thaler. The thaler eventually lost its lisp, and became dollar.

Many countries used their word for crown, for example, crown, sovereign, krone, krun, krone, corona (not the beer), to demonstrate that some crown authority initially granted permission to mint them. Other countries named coins in honor of their heroes, such as the Panamanian balboa, after the explorer Balboa, the Venezuelan Bolivar, after one of its national heroes, and the Peruvian sol, also not a beer, but the Spanish word for sun, after this ancient Incan object of worship.

wedge 楔

nickel 五分鎳幣

prominently 顯著地

（英語點津 Annabel 編輯）