Piastre
Originally a
dollar size
silver coin, the
piastre served as the major unit of currency of
French Indochina (Present-day
Vietnam,
Cambodia, and
Laos), and
Ottoman Turkey.
The term is still unofficially used in
Quebec French and
Acadian slang as a reference to the
Canadian dollar. Early private bank currency issues in French speaking regions of Canada were denominated in piastres. The official French term for the modern Canadian dollar is, of course,
dollar.
Piastre was also the original French word for the
U.S. dollar, used for example in the French text of the
Louisiana Purchase. Modern French uses
dollar for this unit of currency as well.
The piastre still exists as the subdivision of the
Egyptian pound,
Syrian pound and
Jordanian dinar. Theoretically, the piastre also still exists in
Lebanon, where it is a subdivision of the
Lebanese pound; inflation, however, has rendered it superfluous and it is not currently in use. The
new kuruş, the subvision of the Turkish
new lira, is commonly known as the piastre.
*
French Indochinese piastre
