The thaler gave the modern word “dollar” its name.
The name comes from the German-speaking silver coin known as the Joachimsthaler, first minted in 1518 in Joachimsthal, a mining town in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Its name literally meant “Joachim’s valley coin.” The shortened form, thaler, spread across Europe.
Dutch forms of the word, including daalder and later dollar, influenced the name of the Spanish dollar and the colonial currency used in North America. The United States adopted “dollar” as its official monetary unit in the Coinage Act of 1792.
The thaler was not one single coin with an unchanging design or value. Many states issued their own thalers, and their silver content varied. It is therefore different from the US dollar, which became a defined national currency centuries later.