Where does money come from?

The 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet Henrik Ibsen is credited with coining the phrase: “Money may buy the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not the appetite, medicine but not health, acquaintances but not friends, servants but not faithfulness, days of joy but not peace or happiness.” Maybe this state of affairs is due to the heathen roots of the term “money”. The term is said to originate from one of the many temples of Capitolina – one of the seven hills of Rome.

Such is the case with so many of our modern terms, money found its way to us via the immensely complicated network of ancient gods in the Greek and Roman cultures.

The Roman goddess Juno, with Hera as her Greek equivalent, was not only the protector and special counsellor of the state and daughter of Saturn, but also the protectress of funds. For reasons that are not quite clear, over time  she was referred to by the nickname or epithet Juno Moneta.

The Juno-part of the name probably derives from the Etruscan goddess Unie, which means the one, unique, unit, union, united and alone or unique.

The Moneta-part of the name is speculated to come from either from the Latin word monere, which means “remind, warn, or instruct”, or the Greek word moneres, meaning “alone” or “unique”.

It is from this second part of the nickname that we get the word “money”, since moneta was also the word used for coins. Moneta is also the word for money used in many modern languages, including Russian and Italian.

It was also at the temple of Juno that the mint was situated where the coins of ancient Rome were produced.]

And, the male members of our species who sometimes bitterly complain about the money it takes to keep the woman in our lives happy, should take note that she was the goddess that looked after the woman of Rome.

As the patron goddess of Rome and the Roman Empire, she was also called Regina meaning “queen” and, together with Jupiter and Minerva, was worshipped as a triad on that Roman hill called Juno Capitolina.

And, there are no prizes for those who can now guess where the word capitol (as in seat of the government) comes from.

Finance

The word that in modern times probably became the closest associated with “money” is “finance” or  “finances” if you will.

Those government leaders in capitols around the world that are presently battling to come to grips with their countries’ finances, might do well to take note of the roots and underlying principle of that term.

It derives from the Latin and Old French word for “fine”; fine, which originally meant end. The French word for finance came to mean both payment and ending. Having overstretched their debt levels, there is something inevitable in the fact that since the 15^th century the Middle French word carried the notion of ending as in satisfying something that is due or to service due, dues.

And, according to Dictionary.com it has the same Latin root as the word “finish”: finire, meaning, among others, to limit and set bounds.

Over the years, the meaning of the word finance, and the family of words (financial, fine, financing and financier) that grew around it, acquired additional meanings.

For instance the notion of finance implying the management of money was first recorded in English in 1770 and in the sense of furnishing (lending) someone with money, from around from 1866.

One thing has, however, that has never changed, is that if you do not manage your finances in such a way that in the end you can come back to the root of it all and settle your dues, one of the variants of the word, a “fine” (penalty), will come into play one way or another.

Piet Coetzer