money in middle earth

[davem]

Just found this essay by Michael Martinez on Merchants in Middle-earth. He makes reference to something Tolkien wrote for the Appendices of LotR which had to be excised for reasons of space.

From the essay:

Just prior to The Lord of the Rings' publication J.R.R. Tolkien was forced to condense the extensive material he had prepared for the appendices. Among the excluded passages which were only published in The Peoples of Middle-earth was a brief but fascinating section detailing the names of money used in Gondor. The tharni, we are told, was a silver coin, the fourth part of a castar. The tharni may thus have been equivalent to the silver pennies of Eriador.

The Elven equivalents for tharni and castar were canath (from kanat-, 'four') and mirian (from mir, 'a jewel or precious thing'). "The Etymologies" provides a root-word, mbakh, meaning 'exchange', from which words for 'trade', 'tradesman', and 'commerce' were derived in Qenya (the precursor to Quenya). There were also words for 'pedlar' and 'ware' in Noldorin (Sindarin).

Unfortunately I'm still trying to find the exact part of Vol 12 that Martinez refers to. I'll keep looking - unless someone beats me to it.