The world of currency trading is filled with jargon, technical terms and acronyms; even Forex itself stands for foreign exchange. It will take the amateur investor a while to get his or her head around all the new terms they have to learn, but one of the most important is to be able to identify the various foreign currencies from their three-letter abbreviations.
Some are very obvious, such as USD, GBP or EUR, but if you are planning to dabble in some of the more exotic Asian markets or try your luck with the South American countries, then it can be helpful to understand how the Forex market comes up with these abbreviations.
They are not just chosen randomly; there is actually an international standard for naming currencies in order to ensure everyone is working from the same list. The general rule is that you take each country’s two-letter code and add the first letter of its currency. So US Dollar becomes USD although there are exceptions, including EUR for Euro. All of the abbreviations are listed on sites like CitiFX Reviews if you become really confused.