Malaysian ringgit
official currency of Malaysia
The Malaysian ringgit ((, Malaysian: [ˈriŋget]); plural: ringgit; symbol: RM; currency code: MYR; Malay name: Ringgit Malaysia; formerly the Malaysian dollar) is the currency of Malaysia. Issued by the Central Bank of Malaysia, it is divided into 100 cents (Malay: sen).
Etymology
The word ringgit is an obsolete term for "jagged" in the Malay language. The word was originally used to refer to serrated edges. The first European coins to circulate widely in the region were Spanish "pieces of eight" or "cob", their crude appearance resembling stones, hence the word jagged. The availability and circulation of this Spanish currency were due to the Spanish controlling nearby Philippines.
An early printed source, the Dictionary of the Malayan Language from 1812 had already referred to the ringgit as a unit of money.
In modern usage, ringgit is used almost solely for the currency. Due to the common heritage of the three modern currencies, the Singapore dollar and the Brunei dollar are also called ringgit in Malay (currencies such as the US and Australian dollars are translated as dolar), although nowadays the Singapore dollar is more commonly called dolar in Malay. To differentiate between the three currencies, the Malaysian currency is referred to as Ringgit Malaysia, hence the official abbreviation and currency symbol RM. Internationally, the ISO 4217 currency code for Malaysian ringgit is MYR.
The Malay names ringgit and sen were officially adopted as the sole official names on 28 August 1975.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Malaysian ringgit” as official currency of Malaysia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as official currency of Malaysia. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q163712. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1812 and 1975.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Malaysian ringgit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.