The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1896-02-08
THE HISTORY OF WORDS.
Mint aad Honey-Curious Connsstisn Of
Cattle and Capital.

oy ~ufiou SOhHssttSn u
Cattle and Capital.
We all know that "a place where
metal is coined is called u mint. But
why Is it 10 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 mere 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 nalno Of a place for
making coins simply because when
the need of such a name was first
recognized tho place used for their
making happened to be the Roman
temple of the goddess Juno, n of
whose surnanes was Moneta, said
to mean literally adviser. In An
glo-Saxon the word had two sylla-
bles-lnynot-which shows its origin
more clearly than the m~onosyllable
mint does. Money is called moneta
in Italian and Inonnnie in French,
and the French name for a mint is
hotel de8 monnaios.
We habitually think of money
only as coined metal, or what we
call paper money. Our ideas would
be p%rofitably amplitied by a little
special reading on tho subject, and
one interesting book for the purpose
is Money and the Mechanism of
Exchange by w. 5. Jevons, which
begins with tho following narration:
Mile. Xoljo, Il singer Of the The,
atre Lyriquo at Paris, made.a pro-
fessiOnal tour around the world and
gave concert in the Society islands,
IL exchange for an air from Norma
and a few other songs she was to rc-
ceive third part of the receipts,
When counted, her share was found
to consist of 3 pigs, % turkeys, "A
chickens, 5000 cocoanuts, besides
considerable quantities Of bananas,
lemons and oranges. At the Halle
in Paris, rs the prima donna remarks
in her lively letter, printed by M.
Wolowski, this amount of live stock
and vegetables might have brought
4, 900 francs, which would have been
good remuneration for five songs.
In the Society islands, however,
pieces of money were very scarce,
and as madcmoisello could not con
sumo any considerable portion of
the receipts herself it became nece5-
sary in the meantime to feed the
pigs and poultry with the fruit"
Tho singers payment in this way
arose merely from II scarcity of
money, but there was a time when
live stock was the standard measure
of value Or medium Of exchange
and in several languages the name
for money is identical with that of
some kind Of cattle or domcsticated
animal.
Tho name cattle arose from the
fact that tho animals We're counted
by tho head, which suggested the
Latin namo capitalo, from caput,
meaning head. Because cattle We're
the measure Of valUo all property
was reckonod 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 either words
must have come from the same
source? Any chronological dictionary
will tell u that caput, Latin for
head, is a part of many common
English words. l will mention only
a few that occur to me without ref
erenco to books. They are capillary.
caption, capitulate, chapter, decapi
tate, and each Of them has a curious
history.-Philadelphia Times.