Template talk:Pound (currency)

2007 discussion

Is there a reason why this template hasn't been deployed? And yes, I'm volunteering to deploy it if there isn't.
Dove1950 (talk) 21:45, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Transvaal pound

I forgot to save an edit summary for my last edit to the template, so here goes: the 'Transvaal pound' is the same as the 'South African Republic pound' and was merely a redirect to South African pound (to which 'South African Republic pound' links), hence I removed it from the template. (The South African Republic, not identical to modern South Africa, was (and still is) often referred to as the 'Transvaal Republic' or simply the 'Transvaal', the name of the former South African province it became after union in 1910.) Queerly Bohemian (talk) 09:11, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Turkish lira

Why is Turkish lira listed? Only mention of pound in that article is this: After periods of the lira pegged to the British pound and the French franc
So a peg is reason enough to classify lira as pound? 85.76.73.19 (talk) 01:28, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Good question re Lira. Why is any lira listed? Does anyone object if I delete (but add a See Also)? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:12, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

On reflection, it would make the navbar less useful to do so and also because it required untangling two thousand years of history, changing words, changing meanings, changing values. aka Too Difficult. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:40, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Image in template

I reverted the WP:good faith addition of a demonetised banknote to the template, for these reasons:

1. In summary, MOS:IMAGES says that images should be used to illustrate, not to decorate. It is not obvious that this image illustrates anything.
2. WP:Think of the reader on a small format mobile phone, which is how the large majority of visitors access Wikipedia
3. Not a great argument but I don't recall ever seen an image in any other navbar.

Hope that is sufficient for my reversion to be accepted. John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:51, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I added an image because one was used on the templates for "florin". I concede, just thought at the time it might have been helpful. TheCurrencyGuy (talk) 02:10, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Is is really necessary to include "lira" in the title?

Linguistically these two words mean the same thing, I assumed "or similar" adequately covered all bases. Most currency units named "pound" in English are called "livre", "lira", "libra" or even completely unrelated words (such as "girvanka" in Georgian (from "grivna"), "svaras" in Lithuanian, "mārciņa" in Latvian, "nael" in Estonian) in other languages. And as an aside, when it came into being as a unit, the grivna was closer to the weight of a Byzantine litra than the measly 7 ounces that it was during the time of the Kievan Rus'. Debasement saw pretty much all currency units deriving from the Roman libra decline in mass while their names remained the same. TheCurrencyGuy (talk) 02:35, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it is, because the table includes lire in a significant number of flavours. See also the question above re the Turkish Lira and my initial response to it. If the title only says 'pound', that is rather biased. To see what I mean, try changing the title to "currencies called Lira or similar", where the pound is just another similar – I would expect a strongly negative reaction. Yes, I know the name of the navbar is Template:Pound (currency) but if we are going to have currencies that are not pounds in the navbar, it is only fair to reflect that fact in the title. (The name of the template is incidental.) The other option of course is to delete everything that is not a pound but that would make the navbar much less useful (which is why I decided against my earlier proposal to do so). There is a stronger case to delete grivna and its descendents, if anyone wants to propose it (I don't).

As for debasement, see also tower pound and troy pound. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:38, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

I am not arguing about what the name of the navbar is. It is simply my contention that as these two words are identical in meaning it seems pedantic to use multiple words when "or similar" is there to help to establish the commonality. Otherwise the title could get absurdly long. TheCurrencyGuy (talk) 16:56, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

You cannot say in all seriousness that pound and lira are identical, as the words are used in English. Lira, livre and libra are cognates but "pound", not obviously. Yes, "pound" is translated as lira in Italian and Turkish, as livre in French. But to the Man on the Clapham Omnibus, they have very different meanings, values, associations. They are certainly not identical, mathematically or otherwise. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:09, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

I never said they were cognates, they are synonyms. This is certainly what I was taught in school when they explained the origin of £. "Pound" is actually a translation into English of "livre" using a different (but related) Latin root. If the word livre, or better yet libra was more commonly understood in English I would be very happy to use that as the title. I think our point of contention is the meaning of the world "similar", I am taking it to mean "synonym", not necessarily "cognate". According to ngram results "Turkish pound" was more common than "Turkish lira" in American English until the mid 1940s. and in British English until the mid 1950s. TheCurrencyGuy (talk) 20:43, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

In linguistics, cognates are words in different languages that are similar in some respects and can be traced to a common ancestor, though their meanings may have diverged. That is true of Italian: lira and French: livre, the common ancestor being Latin: libra. The etymology of the word 'pound' seems at least at first sight to be rather different, even though we know that conceptually it has the same ancestor. But it doesn't matter because they are certainly not synonyms – different names for the same thing. The Man on the Clapham Omnibus can expect a shop on Clapham High Street to accept pounds in exchange for goods but to refuse the same value in Turkish lire and the Man on the Karaköy Omnibus would tender lire not pounds in the Grand Bazaar; however the Man on the Leith Omnibus should expect service whether he tendered a pound (in English), poond (in Scots) or punnd (in Gàidhlig) since they most certainly are synonyms for the same coin. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:48, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Well this is interesting, I just did some digging, "libra" and "pondus", the origins of "lira" and "pound" were both derived from the same Latin phrase, lībra pondō, meaning "pound weight". The Romance languages took libra (becoming "livre", "lira" etc) and the Germanic languages took pondo (becoming "pound", "pfund", "punt" etc). The words themselves are synonyms when the disambiguating adjective is deleted. The vendor on Leith High Street would not be particularly happy to be tendered in South Sudanese pounds despite use of the same word.

Given the state of the Turkish economy at the moment the hawker at the Grand Bazaar probably would like to be tendered in sterlin. TheCurrencyGuy (talk) 00:02, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Fundamentally, navbars are intended to be useful quick directories, not articles. Having identified that there are two distinct and very old evolutionary pathways from the Roman antecedent, it is only polite to recognise that fact in the title by giving their modern archetypes. "Lira" is not at all obviously similar to "pound" to anyone who hasn't studied the etymology and it is unreasonable to demand that they do. WP:think of the reader. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:33, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Again we come down to the definition of "similar", we are interpreting it differently. My thinking was that if the reader looks at the infobox and sees "or similar" he will come to the realisation "oh they're the same word in different languages", and this is in my opinion of greater educational value than trying to impose a clear cut distinction where none truly exists. If anything it is more confusing to include multiple terms in the navbar. TheCurrencyGuy (talk) 17:46, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

#Turkish lira above suggests that the real world disagrees with your utopian view. As usual. This discussion is going nowhere, very slowly.

@Eyesnore and Izno:, as previous contributors to this template, would you contribute a !vote on whether the title of the template should or should not include the word "lira", in the hope that we can achieve a consensus or at least a substantial majority view. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:15, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Checking the history, "lira" has only been in the title since February of this year so it isn't a long-standing convention that I am taking issue with. I would like to keep navbar titles as simple and concise as possible, with the main title being the standard English word followed by "or similar" speaking for itself allowing the reader to join the dots. I do not assume the reader is a genius with an extensive knowledge, but I respect him enough to believe the "or similar" tag gives him sufficient information to understand that they are the same word in different languages. TheCurrencyGuy (talk) 21:32, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman and Izno: There is a separate Wikipedia article named "lira", so I included it in the navigation bar. Eyesnore 22:34, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm unsure whether that page is truly distinct enough from Pound (currency) to justify itself as a separate article, I suspect it would probably make for a better single article if they were merged. The introduction of Lira is better than that of Pound (currency), and it wouldn't take a great deal of editing to merge the two seamlessly. TheCurrencyGuy (talk) 08:16, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

"Pound" and "lira" read as different words to the average English speaker, and are both commonly used in English. Using just "pound" without "lira" in the title of the navbox strikes me as a bit too cute. The fact that they are combined into a single infobox already reflects the etymological similarity, I don't see any reason to drop "lira." CapitalSasha ~ talk 14:08, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

@Eyesnore:, may we take that as meaning you consider that it should stay in the title? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:14, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

TCG, such a WP:MERGEPROP would certainly fail. Please don't. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:14, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

It feels like every proposal on this site is certain to fail....... TheCurrencyGuy (talk) 18:13, 14 August 2022 (UTC)