Money seems to be about gold but banks about silver. Is this due to an
evolution of the status of the valuable metals themselves? Is it a complicated
(e.g. ateji) etymology?
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2019-04-28T05:52:52.250
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2019-04-28T06:54:40.567
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question
etymology
Why the difference in metal between 銀行 and お金?
Firstly, the native word
[金（かね）](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/jn/43677/meaning/m0u/%E3%81%8B%E3%81%AD/)
in お金 only means _metal_ and **not** _gold_. You may have mixed it up with the
Sino-Japanese
[金（きん）](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/jn/58723/meaning/m0u/%E3%81%8D%E3%82%93/)
that means _gold_ (it also means _metal_ as a morpheme, but not for a
standalone word). The native word for _gold_ is
[こがね](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/jn/76300/meaning/m0u/%E3%81%93%E3%81%8C%E3%81%AD/)
"yellow-metal". Thus money is called お金 just because coins are made of metals.
No mystery :)

On the other hand, 銀行 is [a relatively newly imported
word](http://yain.jp/i/%E9%8A%80%E8%A1%8C) from Chinese originally means 銀
"silver" + 行 "guild". What was traditionally the standard money in Japan is [a
quite debatable
topic](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E8%B2%A8%E5%B9%A3%E5%8F%B2)
(gold, silver, copper, or rice??), but China has a long tradition of silver
standard system, so that's why silver is the synonym of money for them.
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2019-04-28T06:37:48.570
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answer