Idiot, or bald faced liar?

[fortinbras]

This guy was in New Zealand. I don't know when NZ adopted dollars as a unit of currency (instead of, say, pounds and shillings). But the same dumb excuses about $ have been repeatedly shot down in US courts -- including the inane suggestion that a dollar sign with one vertical stroke means something different from a dollar sign with two vertical strokes.
(By the way, contrary to popular myth that the dollar sign is a monagram of U and S, it actually appears to have first entered usage as an American sign for the Spanish silver peso - either a monagram of S and P or else as a sort of representation of the emblem on the back of that coin which showed a capital S between two romanesque pillars - ISI.)

[Gregg]

I think New Zealeand calls their currency dollars also. However Old Zealand uses leafs, which grow on trees thus their rapid inflation problem that hits every spring...

(in fact "old" Zealand is I think in Britain somewhere, I know that it does exist and the question was asked and answered on this board)

[Nikki]

More likely, the name has Dutch origin. Although I didn't find anything definitive after ten minutes of research, I did come across

The first Europeans known to have reached New Zealand were Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman and his crew in 1642

"Zee" appears in Dutch-settled place names in America -- see the Legend Of Sleepy Hollow -- and (I believe) means "sea"

Also, Tasman left his name on a couple of other geographical items in that area such as Tasmania and the Tasman Sea.

[Cathulhu]

I think I'm evolving Cathulhu's law: If the argument you plan to present in court is one your mama would say "Nonsense!" and smack you upside the head for, it just might get you a frivpen. And jail time.

[Mr. Mephistopheles]

This guy was in New Zealand. I don't know when NZ adopted dollars as a unit of currency (instead of, say, pounds and shillings). But the same dumb excuses about $ have been repeatedly shot down in US courts -- including the inane suggestion that a dollar sign with one vertical stroke means something different from a dollar sign with two vertical strokes.
(By the way, contrary to popular myth that the dollar sign is a monagram of U and S, it actually appears to have first entered usage as an American sign for the Spanish silver peso - either a monagram of S and P or else as a sort of representation of the emblem on the back of that coin which showed a capital S between two romanesque pillars - ISI.)

New Zealand has used the dollar at their form of currency for more than 40 years.

[Brandybuck]

(in fact "old" Zealand is I think in Britain somewhere, I know that it does exist and the question was asked and answered on this board)

Not in Britain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealand

[Gregg]

(in fact "old" Zealand is I think in Britain somewhere, I know that it does exist and the question was asked and answered on this board)

Not in Britain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealand

Ah, thank you!

[grixit]

I think New Zealeand calls their currency dollars also. However Old Zealand uses leafs, which grow on trees thus their rapid inflation problem that hits every spring...

(in fact "old" Zealand is I think in Britain somewhere, I know that it does exist and the question was asked and answered on this board)

"Zealand"="Sealand". It's in Holland.

[Pottapaug1938]

"Zealand"="Sealand". It's in Holland.

"Zeeland" is in Holland. "Zealand" is in Denmark. And, a Google search of "Sealand" is worth doing, if only for the good laughs that result....

[grixit]

Dollar < Thaler, meaning from a certain city in Germany, that i can't spell. There was a mint there and the name of their coins became a common term.

Peso originally comes from a word meaning cow, a common measure of wealth in premonitary societies.

[Mr. Mephistopheles]

"Zealand"="Sealand". It's in Holland.

"Zeeland" is in Holland. "Zealand" is in Denmark. And, a Google search of "Sealand" is worth doing, if only for the good laughs that result....

I guess you didn't put a bid in on Sealand when it was up for sale a couple of years ago. (I didn't even have to use the google...)

[Pottapaug1938]

"Zealand"="Sealand". It's in Holland.

"Zeeland" is in Holland. "Zealand" is in Denmark. And, a Google search of "Sealand" is worth doing, if only for the good laughs that result....

I guess you didn't put a bid in on Sealand when it was up for sale a couple of years ago. (I didn't even have to use the google...)

Ya mean I could have bought an elevated, deserted platform off the English coast and rode out Channel storms in the lap of... rust and isolation?

[Mr. Mephistopheles]

I guess you didn't put a bid in on Sealand when it was up for sale a couple of years ago. (I didn't even have to use the google...)

Ya mean I could have bought an elevated, deserted platform off the English coast and rode out Channel storms in the lap of... rust and isolation?

Sounds like fun no? I have an idea: all the sovrun's should pool their meager resources and buy Sealand. Then, they can truly have their own tidy little kingdom. Of course, it will probably cost more than $2.85 so they'll need a little "assistance".

[fortinbras]

Dollar < Thaler, meaning from a certain city in Germany, that i can't spell. There was a mint there and the name of their coins became a common term.

From Prof. Arthur Nussbaum, The Law of the Dollar, 37 Columbia Law Review 1057 (1937):

The name "dollar," the unit of the American monetary system, is of German origin. When, at the close of the Middle Ages, a demand for gross silver coin appeared in Germany as a symptom of economic growth, such a coin was struck in 1517 from the output of the silvermine at Joachimsthal in Bohemia {= "[Saint] Joachim's Valley"; now Jachymov in the west end of the Czech Republic, about 65 miles due south of Dresden}. This coin, called "Joachimsthaler" or shortly "thaler," became, in 1566, as "Reichsthaler" an imperial coin and was exported to England where the anglicized name "dollar" became customary for foreign silver coin of about the thaler's size and value. The name "Spanish dollar" was imparted to the Spanish "peso" or "piece of eight" (because divided into eight "reales") the fine silver contents of which were practically equivalent to the thaler, and obtained lasting and international fame. The American settlers brought the term "Spanisgh dollar" with them and from the turn of the 17th century, this became the prevalent American silver coin. The Spanish dollars were so popular that the several colonies sought to attract them through over-rating. ..... Considering the Spanish dollar the best common unit obtainable under the circumstances, the Continental Congress in financing the war made its bills of credit ("Continental Notes"), issued from 1775, payable in "Spanish milled dollars."