The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1896-03-05
THE HISTORY OF WORDS.
Mint ard Mo1ey-Cur:ous Connection Of
Cattle and Capital.


We all Enow thaa a place where
metal is coined is called mint. But
why IS it SO called? Is it not q strik.
ingly curious fact that the two
words mint and money are made
from the same Latin word? Yet it
Is not more so than many other
facts disclosed in the study of ETY..
mology. There is very commonly a
close connection between the history
of events and the making of the
words most prominent in the record
of that history.
Mint is the name of a place for
making coins simply because when
the need of such O name was first
recognized the place used for their
making happened to be the Roman
temple of the goddess Juno, one oil
whose surnames was Moneta, said
to mean literally "adviser. In An
glo-Saxon the word had two sylla.
bles-mynet-which shows it's origin
more clearly than the monosyllable
mint does. Money is called moneta
in Italian and nonnaie in French,
and the French name for a mint is
"hotel DIES monnaies. -
We habitually think of money
only as coined metal, Or what we
call paper money. Our ideas would
be profitably amplified by little
special reading OH the subject, and
one interesting book for the purpose
is Money and the Mechanism OF
Exchange" by w. S. Jevons. which
begins with the following narration
Mile. Zelie, singer of the The.
atre Lyrique at Paris, made a pro.
fessional tour around the world and
gave a concert in the Society islands.
In exchange for an air from Norma
and few other songs she was to re.
ceive a third part of the receipts.
| When counted, her share was found
to consist of 3 pigs, 90 turkeys, A
chickens, 5000 cocoanuts, besides
considerable quantities of bananas,
lemons and oranges. At the Halle
in Paris, as the prima donna remarks
in her lively letter, printed by M
! Wolowski, this amount of live stock
and vegetables might have brought
1000 francs, which would have beer
good remuneration for five songs
In the Society islands, however
| pieces of money were very scarce
and as mademoiselle could not con
sumo any considerable portion O.
the receipts herself 1t became neces
sary in the meantime to feed tn,
pigs and poultry with the fruit. ="
The singers payment in this way
arose merely from a scarcity O.
money, but there was time whe1
live stock was the standard measure
of value or medium of exchange, ,
and in several languages the name
for money is identical with that O.
some kind of cattle or domesticatet
| animal.
The name cattle arose from the
fact that the animals were counted
by the head, which suggested the
Latin name capitale, from caput
| meaning head. Because cattle were
f, the measure Of value all property
was reckoned as worth so many cat.
tie, and this circumstance also gives
us the words capital and chattel.
Is it not an interesting suggestion
from these facts that other words
must have come from the same
source? Any chronological dictionary
will tell US that caput, Latin for
head, is q part of many common
English words. I will mention only
a few that occur to me without ref
erence to books. They are capillary,
caption, capitulate, chapter, decapi.
tate, and each of them has q curious
story.-Philadelphia Times.