Talk:Pound sterling

50£

50£ is not frequently used at all, some people in UK have never even seen one in their entire life because it is so rare. [1]https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48993008 Onlyloss6973 (talk) 07:24, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

@Onlyloss6973: It's written £50, not 50£. Nevertheless, they do exist, and I see two or three each month. I work in a shop, and some of our customers bring in £50 notes - usually it's either foreign tourists, or rich kids from the local private school. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:22, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

By your own assessment it doesn't mean that is frequently used since it used by a small and certain demographic. The common person living in UK doesn't use it Onlyloss6973 (talk) 11:35, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't know who qualifies as a common person, but the fact that many people don't use it doesn't make it "rare".---Ehrenkater (talk) 11:40, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

So it should still be classified as frequently used? That doesn't seem right to me if many people don't use it Onlyloss6973 (talk) 11:46, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

I've added a note saying that the £50 is "less common".---Ehrenkater (talk) 12:01, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Article merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

To not merge, as the topics are sufficiently distinct to warrant separate discussion. Klbrain (talk) 21:03, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

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I think that the Sterling area article should be merged into this article. There are still countries that are pegged to the pound sterling or use it as their currency.

the up to date list and information could be added as a section in this article to show previous and current countries that peg or use the pound sterling. ChefBear01 (talk) 14:22, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Oppose. Although the sterling zone is almost trivial nowadays, historically it was substantial indeed, when the pound was the world reserve currency. So the topic is notable enough to have its own article, just for openers. Secondly, this (Pound Sterling) article is already very large and it really does not want getting any bigger if we can help it, without a very convincing reason. It is not obvious that you have made that convincing case, sorry. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:03, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Oppose. That sterling area looks to be a topic of its own. There's already a small section here dedicated to sterling area and linking to the main article. There's no need to change how it is. Vgbyp (talk) 07:38, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Oppose. There is a lot of good and useful information in the sterling area article which would be too specific and lengthy to justify putting it in this article. 2204happy (talk) 15:39, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Currency v Unit of account

Adding a {{cn}}, Domdomegg (talk · contribs) questions this assertion in the article: Sterling is the name of the currency as a whole while pound and penny are the units of account., with the edit note Citation needed for unit of account vs name of currency claim, couldn't find anywhere. The challenge is not a frivolous one and maybe needs more eyes (how do you even formulate a google search that doesn't return a million articles?)

Would this be good enough?

The origins of the word sterling
Sterling describes the British currency. It is a word that we see in the pages of the financial press and also, for instance, on travellers cheques when we go abroad. But sterling as a word has come to stand not just for the currency but also more generally for laudable qualities such as steadfastness, honour and integrity; yet, for all that it is so much a part of our lives, its derivation is curiously obscure and elusive.
In explaining the origins of the word the numismatist Professor Philip Grierson associated sterling with the Middle English ster, meaning strong, rigid or fixed. And looking to the numismatic evidence, he observed that towards the end of the reign of William I (1066-1087) the penny had become heavier and that, contrary to the variations which had occurred in previous reigns, it had then remained at the same weight for the next two centuries. Consistently uniform at 22.5 grains, this English, or more accurately Norman, penny gained a deserved reputation abroad as a strong and fixed currency; and Professor Grierson demonstrated that the earliest references to sterling pennies in continental documents, all of them significantly post-Conquest, used the word sterling as an adjective in precisely this sense.
As the range of denominations grew with the issue of farthings and halfpennies, half-groats and groats, gold nobles and their fractions, so the name sterling came to represent the English currency as a whole. And if this was especially the case abroad, it was also true at home, for both Chaucer in the 14th century and Shakespeare 200 years later provide instances of sterling being used in this way in a domestic context.

— Royal Mint

It seems reasonable to me to summarise that as saying that, for a thousand years, the sterling silver penny was the unit of account and the currency as a whole became known as "sterling". I don't see that as a WP:OR or WP:SYNTH violation. It has only been in the last 300 years or so that the pound [up to then only a unit of mass] came into practical use.

However the Bank of England, describing the world as it is today, says "The pound sterling is the official currency in the United Kingdom". and draws no distinction.

So maybe the statement needs to be qualified? was v is?

Anyone else able to advise?

References

𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:53, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I believe we could simply use the Merriam-Webster's dictionary entries on pound and sterling as references here. The former is defined as a 'basic monetary unit', while the latter as 'British money' (in general). Vgbyp (talk) 16:05, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

tyvm. I don't suppose it says anything about the penny, which was the basic monetary unit for a very long time (maybe 1000 years is an exaggeration, but not by much). 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:03, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

My sense is that the reality may be that these terms are often used rather imprecisely, even by specialists. It may make more sense to focus on giving the reader an idea of the range of usages of the terms, rather than giving a singular true and correct definition. I think the opening paragraph does a good job in this regard. CapitalSasha ~ talk 18:04, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

True but the statement that sterling is the name of the currency (and 'pound' and 'penny' are units of account) opens the section #Names, so it almost as significant a prominence as the article lead.

My inclination is to just lose the sentence, I really don't see that it merits such a featured position. Maybe it can survive as a footnote? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:48, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Moving it to a footnote is probably appropriate. Vgbyp (talk) 06:32, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

 Done 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:15, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Etymology: book search needed

Before it was deleted as off-topic, the article Sterling silver had this statement:

One of the earliest attestations of the term is in Old French form esterlin, in a charter of the abbey of Les Préaux, dating to either 1085 or 1104. The English chronicler Orderic Vitalis (1075 – c. 1142) uses the Latin forms libræ sterilensium and libræ sterilensis monetæ.

without a citation. It might be in Vitalis's The ecclesiastical history of England and Normandy because the index reads:

sterilensis, sterling (of moneÿ):

ii. 148.34, 150.4, 266.22, 352.12;
iii. 146.13, 234.18;

v. 224.21, 312.8, 318.24

but Archive.org says that they are not available to borrow and both the Hathi Trust and the Open Library return 503 Service Unavailable No server is available to handle this request.. So does anyone have access through a University library? Because it would certainly be worthy of inclusion if verifiable. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:55, 14 March 2025 (UTC)