Why are they called pennys and dimes? I get quarters and nickels but where did they find that name?

Question

Why are they called pennys and dimes? I get quarters and nickels but where did they find that name?

Answer 1

Penny comes from pence which comes from a root meaning 1/100, like per cent.  Dime comes from the same root as decimal, meaning 1/10.

Answer 2

what the heck that is the stupidest question i have heard!

Answer 3

Cent is a derrivation of the word Century (actually they both come from a latin word Centum, meaning hundred.) but the word penny has a longer, more interesting history (which doesn't really deal with cents.)

Penny comes originally from the 9th century, from the word Pfennig, when Charlemagne declared that 240 Pfennigs should be minted from a pound of silver. A single coin thus contained 1.5 to 2 grams of silver. Until the 13th century, the pfennig was made from real silver, and thus of high value. From the 12th century on, the King was no longer able to enforce the regalia to mint coins, so many towns and local lords made their own coins, mostly using less valuable metals and less metal per coin, so different Pfennigs had different values.  This eventually became the word we use today for penny.

Penny is the singular form of the word Pence, which is more than one cent's worth. (If a coin is worth that of two pennies, it is called two pence.)  If you have more than one singular unit of "Penny" coins then you would call them "pennies."  That can be a bit confusing, I know.  

Dime comes from one of the first coins minted by the United States, the Disme and the Half Disme.  This word comes from the French language and means litterally "Tenth."  This name is believed to have come from Ben Franklin, he spent significant amounts of time in France and perhaps was inclined to name it the Disme out of an affinity for the french people and language.

Answer 4

Dime comes from the french word meaning 1/10th. Penny comes from Pence which is basically a penny in Great Britain.

Answer 5

Whenever you don't understand a word, consider that it could possibly be derived from another language.  Many words of the English language are actually made from words of other languages.  Penny and dime are both examples of this kind of word.  The word penny was derived from the Finnish word "penni" meaning 1/100 of a Finnish mark, and the word dime is a French word that means "tenth part".

Answer 6

Wikipedia. Thats why its there!  

Answer 7

They must've been named after someone.