澳門與美洲白銀──流入中國之西班牙美洲幣名論考

The major Spanish currency circulated to China is called real, which is transliterated into Chinese as “lei-a-er”. When used as adjective, it means monarchal; as noun, it then refers to royal currency. In fact, real is both the unit of weight of silver and the name of currency. Since 1535, Spain had started to set up the mint in America. At its first stage, the primary currency is macuquina, which is also known as moneda de cruz. The second stage focuses on the currency peso de 8 reales, named as peso, real de 8, duro, patacón, peso macuquino, peso fuerte or peso grueso as well, which include columnario and busto. Among them, Columnario and busto are the two hard peso, called by Chinese as “fan-mian-qian”(silver coin of foreign origin), “gui-tou-qian”(silver coin resembling grimace face), “hua-bian-qian”(silver coin with design on its rim), “yang-qian”(foreign dollar), “si-gong”(silver coin with ancient Roman numeral IIII on it), or “fo-tou”(silver coin with the portrait of monarch), etc.