Horror As 'Man Doused In Bleach' In Busy...
News1 min ago
No best answer has yet been selected by rosowsky. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.The Oxford English Dictionary says the origin of 'tanner' is uncertain. Here are a few possible sources, however. A man called Tanner was a coin-designer in the reign of George II; however, he died in 1775 and George II died in 1760. The very first use of the word 'tanner' to mean 'sixpence' did not appear in print before 1811. You would have expected the word to emerge somewhere during their lifetimes rather than about two generations later. I very much doubt we'd decide to nickname a coin today after a designer who worked in 1950. Here are three more possibilities, the first of which seems - to me at least - to be more likely. The Italian word for 'small change' is (was?) 'denaro', which sounds pretty like 'tanner'. There is also the Romany word 'tawno' meaning 'little one' and the sixpence was a small coin. Again, the word sounds very like 'tanner'. Finally, there may be a connection with 'thaler' - from which we get 'dollar' - an old German silver coin. Not quite so close in sound, but still a possibility. Take your pick!
As fo 'bob' = shilling, again no-one is certain. It is certainly true that there was a French coin in the 14th century called a 'bobe', so there just could be a connection, though it seems a bit thin.