#us-penny

#us-penny

Like nearly all Americans, you descended from an immigrant, the British penny. Those coins were once so valuable that they were split into halves and even quarters your late British cousins, the halfpenny and the farthing. In Britain, the coin's history goes back to the time when kings and queens had names like Offa and Cynethryth and Aethelred the Unready, and your name likely traces its lineage from the German for pan pfanne, for pan, which evolved to pfennig, for penny.