The term pound (from Latin pondus, “weight”) can refer to both a unit of weight (Weights and measures) and a currency unit. As a currency unit, the pound was based originally on the weight of a specific quantity of coins. Such pounds were not actually minted as coins until the late Middle Ages; as counting units, they long served as coin of account, closely related to the counting unit of the mark, which as a rule had the value of half or two-thirds of a pound. In the course of the Middle Ages, on the European continent various mark weights became prevalent as standard monetary units. 

Curr…