Few symbols are as present in our day to day as the symbols of money. That is why today we ask ourselves what is the origin of these designs, at least, of the three most famous: the dollar, the pound and the euro.
Today we will talk about the dollar
The dollar
The origin of the dollar symbol is the most curious, but also the most imprecise, since there are only assumptions that have never been fully proven.
The main theory has Spain as the protagonist, specifically its silver reales, a currency that between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries was the basis of the Spanish monetary system.
According to this theory, the “$” symbol would be a stylization of the Columns of Hercules that appeared on these coins, which began to spread throughout the American continent after colonization. The vertical bars would be the columns and the S would be the band with the legend “Plus Ultra” that surrounded them.
