Decimal Day Board. Consideration was given to introducing a new major unit of currency worth ten shillings in the old currency: suggested names included the "new pound", the "royal" and the "noble". This would have resulted in the "decimal penny" being worth only slightly more than the old penny (this approach was adopted, for example, when South Africa, Australia and New Zealand decimalised in the 1960s, adopting respectively the South African rand, Australian dollar and New Zealand dollar equal in value to 10 shillings). But Halsbury decided, in view of the pound sterling's importance as a reserve currency, that the pound should
Coins of the pound sterling abbreviation for the old penny, d, was derived from the Roman "denarius", and the abbreviation for the shilling, s, from the Roman "solidus". The shilling was also denoted by the slash symbol, also called a solidus for this reason, which was originally an adaptation of the long s. The symbol "£", for the pound, is derived from the first letter of the Latin word for pound, "libra". A similar pre-decimal system operated in France, also based on the Roman currency, consisting of the "livre" (L), "sol" or "sou" (s) and "denier" (d). Until 1816 another similar system was used in