The region the currency was minted was called “Joachimsthal”, so the name became “Joachimsthaler”, with the suffix -er signifying it is something from there. The English suffix -er works similarly - a Londoner is a person from London.
By the way, nowadays the word is spelled “Tal”, not “Thal”. I’ll use that spelling from now on to also avoid any confusion with the thorn sound im English - “Th” in German is pronounced the same as “T”.
Because “Joachimstaler” has a lot of syllables, eventually people just said “Taler” instead, there was only one currency from a place with “-tal” at the end anyways. All German regions have dialects whose prononciation of certain letters differs from standard German - which standardized spelling conventions. As such, people from some other regions wouldn’t have written “Tal” but rather “Dal”, had they named the region. Small interjection: Bordeaux instead of Porto: A woman with a Saxon dialect accidentally booked the wrong ticket on the phone.
As such the Dutch / Low Germans named the currency “Daler” which then became “Dollar”.
Small corrections:
The region the currency was minted was called “Joachimsthal”, so the name became “Joachimsthaler”, with the suffix -er signifying it is something from there. The English suffix -er works similarly - a Londoner is a person from London.
By the way, nowadays the word is spelled “Tal”, not “Thal”. I’ll use that spelling from now on to also avoid any confusion with the thorn sound im English - “Th” in German is pronounced the same as “T”.
Because “Joachimstaler” has a lot of syllables, eventually people just said “Taler” instead, there was only one currency from a place with “-tal” at the end anyways. All German regions have dialects whose prononciation of certain letters differs from standard German - which standardized spelling conventions. As such, people from some other regions wouldn’t have written “Tal” but rather “Dal”, had they named the region. Small interjection: Bordeaux instead of Porto: A woman with a Saxon dialect accidentally booked the wrong ticket on the phone.
As such the Dutch / Low Germans named the currency “Daler” which then became “Dollar”.
I will absorb this and fix my knowledge. Thank you!