Which country has used the same currency name longest?

The pound, in continuous use in England since Anglo-Saxon times - over 1,200 years, which makes it the oldest currency name still in circulation anywhere. It began as a literal weight: one pound of silver, divided into 240 pennies, which is why the abbreviation is a stylised L for the Latin libra, a pound weight.

That is also where the old pre-decimal system came from. Pounds, shillings and pence, with twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound, is an awkward arrangement to modern eyes and a convenient one for splitting things - 240 divides by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 and 12. Britain only decimalised in 1971, decades after most of the world.

Sterling probably comes from the Old English for a small star, marked on early Norman pennies. The coins mattered because they were reliable: the English penny held its silver content unusually consistently for centuries, which is how a small island's money became a trusted unit across northern Europe long before there was an empire to enforce it.