You may have heard that the dollar sign ($) was born from a monogram of the letters “U” and “S,” as in “United States.”
Well, you heard wrong.
The symbol comes from an abbreviation of “peso” aka “ps,” which first occurred in the 1770s when English-Americans had trading relations with the Spaniards. The name “dollar” comes from the old Bohemian currency—a thaler.
In design, the dollar symbol can represent national identity, physical currency or even the biblical story of the serpent.
