WHY do the names of some currencies derive from measures of weight? The designations of many currencies are closely related to various measures of weight.
A typical example is the British pound sterling:
sterling was the name given to silver coins, and 240 such coins weighed one pound. Similar is the origin of the foreign currency in several countries called the
lira, which is the Italian equivalent of the weight unit pound. In medieval Western Europe, a mark was used to measure the weight of silver, which was slightly lighter than the pound —
from it came the Deutschmark.
