Finance:Currency symbol

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Short description: Symbol used to represent a monetary currency's name
Symbols of the four most widely held reserve currencies (dollar, euro, yen, pound)

A currency symbol or currency sign is a graphic symbol used to denote a currency unit. Usually it is defined by a monetary authority, such as the national central bank for the currency concerned.

A symbol may be positioned in various ways, according to national convention: before, between or after the numeric amounts: €2.50, 2,50€ and Template:Cifrao.

Symbols are neither defined nor listed by international standard ISO 4217, which only assigns three-letter codes.

Usage

When writing currency amounts, the location of the symbol varies by language. For currencies in English-speaking countries and in most of Latin America, the symbol is placed before the amount, as in $20.50. In most other countries, including many in Europe, the symbol is placed after the amount, as in 20,50€. Exceptionally, the symbol for the Cape Verdean escudo (like the Portuguese escudo, to which it was formerly pegged) is placed in the decimal separator position, as in Template:Cifrao.[1]

Design

Formal dimensions of the euro sign
The euro sign as implemented in a selection of typefaces

Older currency symbols have evolved slowly, often from previous currencies. The modern dollar and peso symbols originated from the mark employed to denote the Spanish dollar,[2] whereas the pound and lira symbols evolved from the letter L (written until the seventeenth century in blackletter type as [math]\displaystyle{ \mathfrak{L} }[/math]) standing for libra, a Roman pound of silver.[3]

Newly invented currencies and currencies adopting new symbols have symbolism meaningful to their adopter. For example, the euro sign is based on ϵ, an archaic form of the Greek epsilon, to represent Europe;[4] the Indian rupee sign is a blend of the Latin letter 'R' with the Devanagari letter (ra);[5] and the Russian Ruble sign is based on Р (the Cyrillic capital letter 'er').[6]

There are other considerations, such as how the symbol is rendered on computers and typesetting. For a new symbol to be used, its glyphs needs to be added to computer fonts and keyboard mappings already in widespread use, and keyboard layouts need to be altered or shortcuts added to type the new symbol. For example, the European Commission was criticized for not considering how the euro sign would need to be customized to work in different fonts.[7] The original design was also exceptionally wide. These two factors have led to most type foundries designing customized versions that match the 'look and feel' of the font to which it is to be added, often with reduced width.

List of currency symbols currently in use

Rupee symbols by language

Rupee sign in other languages (scripts)
Language Sign in Unicode Currency
Telugu U+0C30 రూ రూపాయి Indian rupee
Tamil U+0BF9 TAMIL RUPEE SIGN (HTML ௹) Indian rupee / Sri Lankan rupee
Gujarati U+0AF1 GUJARATI RUPEE SIGN (HTML ૱) Indian rupee
Kannada U+0CB0 KANNADA LETTER RA (HTML ರ) Indian rupee
Sinhala රු (U+0DBB SINHALA LETTER RAYANNA (HTML ර)) + (U+0DD4 SINHALA VOWEL SIGN KETTI PAA-PILLA (HTML ු)) Sri Lankan rupee
North Indic U+A838 NORTH INDIC RUPEE MARK (HTML ꠸) Indian rupee

List of historical currency symbols

Some of these symbols may not display correctly.

Symbol Uses
Argentine austral (1985–1991)
Cz$ Brazilian cruzado (1986–1989)
₢$ Brazilian cruzeiro (1942–1967)
Cr$ Brazilian cruzeiro (1970–1986)
Brazilian cruzeiro (1990–1993)
CR$ Brazilian cruzeiro real (1993–1994)
NCz$ Brazilian cruzado novo (1989–1990)
NCr$ Brazilian cruzeiro novo (1967–1970)
Rs$ Brazilian real (1747–1942)
Pfennig, a subdivision of the German Mark (1875–1923) and the German Reichsmark (1923–1948)
M East German Deutsche Mark (east) (1948–1964)
DM West German and united German Deutsche Mark (west) (1948–2001)
Nordic mark symbol used by Ludvig Holberg in Denmark and Norway in the 17th and 18th centuries[8]
Greek drachma
ECU (not widely used, and now historical; replaced by the euro)
Chilean escudo (1960–1975)
ƒ Dutch gulden, currently used in the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba
Fr Franc, used in France and other countries; in France an F with double bar (₣) was proposed in 1988 but never adopted
Kčs Czechoslovak koruna (1919–1993)
Lm Maltese lira
Ls Latvian lats (1922–2013, not continuously)
Lt Lithuanian litas (1922–2014, not continuously)
M East German Mark der DDR (1968–1990)
ℳ︁ German Mark (1875–1923)
MDN East German Mark der Deutschen Notenbank (1964–1968)
mk Finnish markka (1860–2002)
o$s Argentine peso oro sellado (1881–1970)
PF Philippine peso fuerte (1852–1901)
Salvadoran colón (1892–2001)
Spanish peseta (1869–2002)
R or RD Swedish riksdaler (1777–1873)
ℛ︁ℳ︁ Reichsmark (1923–1948)
Double-barred dollar sign.svg Portuguese escudo (cifrão)
Sk Slovak koruna (1993–2008)
Spesmilo (1907 – First World War) in the Esperanto movement
Livre tournois (13th century – 1795)
𐆚 As coin used during the Roman Empire and Roman Republic
𐆖 Denarius coin used in Ancient Rome from 211 BC to the 3rd century AD
𐆙 Dupondius coin used during the Roman Empire and Roman Republic
𐆗 Quinarius coin used in Ancient Rome from 211 BC to the 3rd century AD
𐆘 Sestertius coin used in Ancient Rome from 211 BC to the 3rd century AD
I/. Peruvian inti (1985-1991)
Bengali rupee mark[9][10]
Bengali ānā, historically used to represent 1/16 of a taka or rupee[10]
Bengali gaṇḍā, historically used to represent 1/20 of an ānā (1/320 of a taka or rupee)[10]
߾ Dorome sign using the N'Ko alphabet[11]
߿ Taman sign using the N'Ko alphabet[11]
𞲰 Indic Siyaq rupee mark[12]

See also

References

  1. "Moedas" (in pt). Banco de Cabo Verde.. http://www.bcv.cv/vPT/Notas%20e%20Moedas/Moedas/Paginas/Moedas.aspx. "A mais recente emissão de moedas do BCV é a moeda comemorativa de 200$00 emitida em 2005"  [BCV's most recent coin issue is the 200$00 commemorative coin issued in 2005]
  2. Kinnaird, Lawrence (July 1976). "The Western Fringe of Revolution". The Western Historical Quarterly 7 (3): 259. doi:10.2307/967081. 
  3. "The Origins of £sd". The Royal Mint Museum. http://www.royalmintmuseum.org.uk/Default.aspx?PageID=14314417. 
  4. "European Commission – Economic and Financial Affairs – How to use the euro name and symbol". Ec.europa.eu. https://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/euro/cash/symbol/index_en.htm. 
  5. "Currency Symbol for Indian Rupee". http://www.idc.iitb.ac.in/events/Indian_Rupee_Symbol.pdf. 
  6. "Currency Geeks Rejoice, Russia Has A New Symbol For The Rouble". Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-introduces-new-currency-symbol-2013-12. 
  7. Westcott, K. (2009) India seeks rupee status symbol , BBC 10 March 2009, accessed 1 September 2009
  8. Evensen, Nina Marie; Anderson, Deborah (2012-07-24). "L2/12-242: Proposal for one historic currency character, MARK SIGN". https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2012/12242-mark-sign.pdf. 
  9. "Bengali Code Chart, Range: 0980–09FF". The Unicode Standard. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0980.pdf. 
  10. 10.0 10.1 10.2 Pandey, Anshuman (2007-05-21). "L2/07-192: Proposal to Encode the Ganda Currency Mark for Bengali in the BMP of the UCS". https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2007/07192r-bengali-ganda.pdf. 
  11. 11.0 11.1 Everson, Michael (2015-12-19). "L2/15-338: Proposal to encode four N'Ko characters in the BMP of the UCS". https://www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n4706-nko-additions.pdf. 
  12. Pandey, Anshuman (2015-11-05). "L2/15-121R2: Proposal to Encode Indic Siyaq Numbers". https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15121r2-indic-siyaq.pdf.