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The denarius in the British Empire
Moderators: Nicholas
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Nicholas
Sat Jul 10 2010, 01:35am
Deus Ex Machina

Registered Member #1
Joined: Sun Jul 01 2007, 10:10pm
City, State:: Ocala, Florida
Posts: 559
 So I was adding a coin to the database and I saw the denomination as 1 D. I was wondering if that meant dollar and I was not aware of South Africa using dollars ever. I did a bit of searching and found that the value was one penny.

After a little bit more research it turns out that coins from Great Britain and the empire used D for denarius and coins valued less than a shilling were given this abbreviation. The denarius was originally a roman coin and the smallest unit of denomination. So why did Great Britain decide to use an abbreviation for denarius for their small coinage? I am not entirely sure.

I definitely thought it worth looking into.
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BCNumismatics
Sun Jul 11 2010, 11:07pm
Registered Member #378
Joined: Mon Mar 22 2010, 07:19am
Posts: 260
 Nicholas,
The pre-decimal system that was in use in the British Isles (& in various British Commonwealth countries until 1973,when Nigeria was the very last country to change over to the decimal system) is derived from the Roman currency system.

Have a read here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_Sterling .

The 'd.' was replaced after decimalisation in Great Britain,the Channel Islands,the Falkland Islands,Gibraltar,& St. Helena & Ascension in 1968-71 with 'p.' to indicate that the Penny was now a decimal currency unit.

Aidan.
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