dollar [M16th] A dollar was originally a German silver coin, one that historians now call a thaler. The name comes from German Thaler or Taler, short for Joachimsthaler, a coin from the silver mine of Joachimsthal (‘Joachim’s valley’), now called Jáchymov, in the Czech Republic. People later applied the term to a coin used in the Spanish American colonies which was traded widely in British North America at the time of the War of American Independence. The new nation adopted dollar as the name of its monetary unit after achieving independence. The same German place name element thal is found in Neanderthal man, whose remains were first found in the Neandert(h)al Valley in western Germany.