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The sol, later called a sou, is the name of a number of different coins, for accounting or payment, dating from Antiquity to today. The name is derived from the late-Roman and Byzantine solidus. Its longevity of use anchored it in many expressions of the French language.
The solidus is a coin made of 4.5 g of gold, created by emperor Constantine to replace the aureus .
Doing honour to its name, the new currency earns the reputation of unalterability, crossing almost unchanged the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the great invasions and the creation of Germanic kingdoms throughout Europe. Not only was it issued in the Byzantine Empire until the 11th century under the name of nomisma , but the solidus was imitated by the barbarian kings, particularly the Merovingians, albeit most often in the form of a "third of a sou" ( tremissis ).
![The last "sou" : 1939, French five centimes (actual [?]: 19 mm) 5 French centimes 1939.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6a/5_French_centimes_1939.jpg/150px-5_French_centimes_1939.jpg)
Facing a shortage of gold, Charlemagne introduced a new "stabilization" (as devaluations are often called): from then on the solidus no longer represents 1/12 of the Roman gold pound but 1/20 of the Carolingian silver pound instead. The sou itself was divided into 12 denarii and one denarius was worth 10 asses . With rare exceptions (such as Saint Louis' "gros"[ clarification needed ]), the denarius was for a long time in practice the only coin in circulation, with solidi and pounds used only as accounting units. [1]
Charlemagne's general principle of 12 denarii worth one sol and of twenty sols worth one pound was eventually declined along many variants according to the alloy used and the dual metal gold:silver sometimes used for some issues. Only members of the money changers corporation could find their way among the equivalences and the many currencies used in Europe at each period, and therefore were unavoidable for most non-local commercial operations.
The name evolves as does the rest of the language, from Latin to French. Solidus becomes soldus, then solt in the 11th century, then sol in the 12th century. In the 18th century (Ancien Régime) the spelling of sol is adapted to sou so as to be closer to the pronunciation that had previously become the norm for several centuries.
In 1795, the livre was officially replaced by the franc and the sou became obsolete as an official currency division. Nevertheless, the term "sou" survived as a slang term for 1⁄20 of a franc. Thus, the large bronze 5-centime coin was called "sou" (for example in Balzac or Victor Hugo), the "pièce de cent sous" ("hundred sous coin") meant five francs and was also called "écu" (as in Zola's Germinal ). The last 5-centime coin, a remote souvenir inherited from the "franc germinal", was removed from circulation in the 1940s, but the word "sou" keeps being used (except for the 1960 new franc's five-centime coin which was worth five old francs).
The term 'sou' is often used in the exclaimation "haven't got a sou". This is to denote that one has no money, not even a single coin. This phrase is used mostly without the knowledge of the source of the word 'sou'.
In Canadian French, the word "sou" is used in everyday language and means the 1/100 division of the Canadian dollar. The official term is "cent". Canadian one-cent coins (no longer in circulation) have the vernacular name of "sou noir". The Canadian quarter, valued at 25 cents, is called trente sous ("thirty sous"). This usage dates from when the word “sou” was used in French-speaking Lower Canada to refer to the halfpenny coin of the Canadian pound; at that time an American quarter was valued at 1 shilling 3 pence Canadian (i.e. 15 pence Canadian), and the usage remained after Canada switched currencies. "Échanger quatre trente sous pour une piastre" ("to exchange four 30 sous for one piastre") therefore means changing something for an identical thing, as the "piastre" is the common name for the Canadian dollar.
In Switzerland, a hundred-sou coin is a five Swiss franc coin and a four sou coin is a twenty Swiss centime coin. The word sou also remains in informal language in the terms "ten, twenty ... sous".
The French term sou was borrowed into Vietnamese as the word xu / su (樞). [2] The term is usually used to simply mean the word "coin" often in compound in the forms of đồng xu (銅樞) or tiền xu (錢樞). The modern Vietnamese đồng is nominally divided into 100 xu.
Used for over a thousand years, the word "sou" is deeply rooted in the French language and expressions. Les sous, plural, is a synonym for money.
Centime is French for "cent", and is used in English as the name of the fraction currency in several Francophone countries.
The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence or one-twentieth of a pound before being phased out during the 1960s and 1970s.
A penny is a coin or a unit of currency in various countries. Borrowed from the Carolingian denarius, it is usually the smallest denomination within a currency system. Presently, it is the formal name of the British penny (abbr. p) and the de facto name of the American one-cent coin (abbr. ¢) as well as the informal Irish designation of the 1 cent euro coin (abbr. c). Due to inflation, pennies have lost virtually all their purchasing power and are often viewed as an expensive burden to merchants, banks, government mints and the public in general.
The franc, also commonly distinguished as the French franc (FF), was a currency of France. Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money. It was reintroduced in 1795. After two centuries of inflation, it was redenominated in 1960, with each new franc (NF) being worth 100 old francs. The NF designation was continued for a few years before the currency returned to being simply the franc. Many French residents, though, continued to quote prices of especially expensive items in terms of the old franc, up to and even after the introduction of the euro in 2002. The French franc was a commonly held international reserve currency of reference in the 19th and 20th centuries. Between 1998 and 2002, the conversion of francs to euros was carried out at a rate of 6.55957 francs to 1 euro.
The solidus or nomisma was a highly pure gold coin issued in the Late Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire. The early 4th century saw the solidus introduced in mintage as a successor to the aureus, which was permanently replaced thereafter by the new coin, whose weight of about 4.5 grams remained relatively constant for seven centuries. In the Byzantine Empire, the solidus, or nomisma, remained a highly pure gold coin until the 11th century, when several Byzantine emperors began to strike the coin with less and less gold. The nomisma was finally abolished by Alexius I in 1092, who replaced it with the hyperpyron, which also came to be known as a "bezant". The Byzantine solidus also inspired the originally slightly less pure dinar issued by the Muslim Caliphate. In Western Europe, the solidus was the main gold coin of commerce from late Roman times to Pepin the Short's currency reform in the 750s, which introduced the silver-based pound/shilling/penny system.
The livre tournois was one of numerous currencies used in medieval France, and a unit of account used in Early Modern France.
The piastre or piaster is any of a number of units of currency. The term originates from the Italian for "thin metal plate". The name was applied to Spanish and Hispanic American pieces of eight, or pesos, by Venetian traders in the Levant in the 16th century.
£sd, spoken as "pounds, shillings and pence", is the popular name for the pre-decimal currencies once common throughout Europe. The abbreviation originates from the Latin currency denominations librae, solidi, and denarii. In the United Kingdom, these were referred to as pounds, shillings, and pence.
The riel is the currency of Cambodia. There have been two distinct riel, the first issued between 1953 and May 1975. Between 1975 and 1980, the country had no monetary system. A second currency, also named "riel", has been issued since 20 March 1980. Since the late 1990s, the riel has had an unofficial fixed exchange rate of 4,100:1 with United States dollar, Cambodia's second de facto currency for commercial transactions.
The gourde or goud is the currency of Haiti. Its ISO 4217 code is HTG and it is divided into 100 centimes (French) or santim (Creole).
Each "article" in this category is a collection of entries about several stamp issuers, presented in alphabetical order. The entries are formulated on the micro model and so provide summary information about all known issuers.
The piastre de commerce was the currency of French Indochina between 1885 and 1954. It was subdivided into 100 cents, each of 2~6 sapèques.
The livre was the currency of Kingdom of France and its predecessor states of Francia and West Francia from 781 to 1794. Several different livres existed, some concurrently. The livre was the name of coins and of units of account.
The pound was the currency of the Canadas until 1858. It was subdivided into 20 shillings (s), each of 12 pence (d). In Lower Canada, the sou was used, equivalent to a halfpenny. Although the £sd accounting system had its origins in sterling, the Canadian pound was never at par with sterling's pound.
The livre parisis, also known as the Paris or Parisian livre, was a medieval French coin and unit of account originally notionally equivalent to a French pound of silver. It was the chief currency of the Capetian dynasty before being generally replaced by the livre tournois under Philip II in the 13th century. Louis IX ceased minting it and it was finally abolished as a unit of account by Louis XIV in 1667.
The livre was currency of Jersey until 1834. It consisted entirely of French coins.
Between 1878 and 1885, the Cochinchina piastre was the currency of the French colony of Cochinchina. It was replaced by the French Indochinese piastre after the creation of a unified administration for Cochinchina and the other French protectorates and colonies in the Far East on 22 December 1885.
The Carolingian monetary system, also called the Carolingian coinage system or just the Carolingian system, was a currency structure introduced by Charlemagne in the late 8th century as part of a major reform, the effects of which subsequently dominated much of Europe, including Britain, for centuries. It is characterised by having three denominations with values in the ratio 1:12:240, the units of which went under different names in the different languages, but which corresponded to the Latin terms libra (pound), solidus (shilling) and denarius (penny), respectively.
