|
Links 🔗
History of the Pound Sterling
Understanding British Money
It is a Bank Holiday (Public Holiday) here in the UK as I write this week’s edition of Pub Convos and people are back in pubs and restaurants after restrictions had been lifted. I was back in a pub myself and for the first time in nearly a year, I paid for something with cash. This got me thinking about how British money has many nicknames and that pre-decimalisation, money was a bit more complicated back then. This week lets explore some common nicknames for money and the denominations that you might have heard before but have no clue how much its worth.
Pre-Decimalisation Pound Sterling:
Since the introduction of the currency to the British Isles, a pound consisted of 240 pence (pence being the plural of penny). 240 pence to a pound despite being a little awkward still makes some sense, right? Nope the Brits had to make it more complicated. Here are a couple of denominations that you might have come across when watching movies of TV shows. Farthing: a coin which has a value of ¼ of a penny. Halfpenny: The value is as its name would suggest, half a penny or 2 farthings. However, the unique thing about this denomination is that it is pronounced “hay-penny”. Shilling: 12 pence made up a shilling and 20 shillings would make up a pound. The archaic saying “take the King’s shilling” is to enlist in the British Army or Navy as the daily pay of a soldier then was exactly one shilling. A colloquial alternative name for shilling is bob i.e., 2 shillings = 2 bob. The coin pictured in this piece is an example of a shilling. Guinea – A guinea is actually the predecessor of the pound and was replaced by it in the 1800s. However, the use of a guinea as an accounting term survived, a guinea represented a pound and a shilling or 21 shillings. A guinea was often used when paying for professional services (lawyer, doctor, artist.) due to it seen as a more aristocratic and upper-class denomination.
Post-Decimalisation Pound Sterling:
At this point you might ask: Why is 1 pound equivalent to 240 pence? Isn’t it meant to be 100 pence like most currencies in the world? (100 cents to a dollar, 100 sen to a ringgit). That is because only in 1971 that the British government decided to decimalise the currency and made it so that 1 pound would be equivalent to 100 pence. From then on, 15 February 1971 was known as Decimal Day. The current denominations are 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1. £2, £5, £10, £20, £50.
Modern Nicknames:
Here are some modern nicknames for the current denominations of the pound sterling.
Quid: Slang for one pound, believed to have originated from the Latin phrase Quid pro Quo. Fiver: Colloquial name for a £5 note. Tenner: Colloquial name for a £10 note, not to be confused with “Tanner” which is the colloquial term for a sixpence coin. Pony: Slang term for £25, commonly used in casinos as chips tend to have a £25 denomination Monkey: Slang term for £500.
The emergence of cards, cryptocurrencies and other digital forms of currency and value have made cash a less popular form of payment. However the history of money and their inherent value in history and culture should not be undervalued and makes for an excellent pub conversation.
|
