Dear Log,
So now the Euros have euros. While I'm not unconditionally thrilled that a weird economic-control centralization is riding along with the currency unification, I suppose it's all better than paying usurous exchange fees.
Pity, tho, about the name, "euro". Sounds bland and lame. I rather liked the first-draft of the name: "ecu". It sounded simultaneously old and new. Old because in Þe Olden Times, there was a French coin called the écu, from Latin "scutum", meaning "shield", supposedly as there was a fleur-de-lis shield pictured on one face; and new because it's a letterword for the very plastic-fantastic moderne-sounding "European Currency Unit". But no, "euro" won; yet another case of insipidity being adopted under the name of compromise.
Personally, I would have suggested
the French name for the currency be "franc", the German name for the currency
be "mark", and so on; and then this 2002-01-01 thing would just be a matter of revaluation
(and unification), like when Charles De Gaul
(AKA the French government) decreed that on 1960-01-01, one hundred francs would
transmute
into one "new franc".
But idea is a bit too
Zen for Yurp, I guess.
Yes, I was quite disappointed when they changed the name. But then, in German it sounded a lot like "cow" so you have to sacrifice something to cross-language unity
I think that a common name is better than lots of different names. And imagine the confusion as people try to talk about separate currencies with the same name, or the same currency with different names ! The exchange rates were already fixed since 1999, but having different coins was quite impractical. The advantage of having a common name is the psychological effect imho: people realise that they're in the same boat.
