The establishment of commodity-money economics has a long history. It starts with the exchange of gifts in primitive communities through the barter trade in the Middle Age. Practically all terms connected to trade and finance reveal a story, which stands behind their names. Gold and silver were treated as other goods of weight and such currencies as pound still keep track of this. The town Joachimsthal became godfather of the Habsburg thaler, the Scandinavian daler and the American dollar. The right of authorities to mint coins is reflected in the appellations ducat, real, sovereign or imperial. The Bulgarian name of the game heads or tails refer to the calligraphic monogram of Ottoman sultans, which was stamped out on the coins. The paper traces the evolution of financial terms on evidence of selected languages.
Key words: take and give, rich, buy and sell, trade, price, means of payment, coins.
