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The phonetics would have been even more similar at the time, but I suspect it's a coincidence. The words stem from different origins†, the sense development of "piece" is straightforward (a coin was a chunk of precious metal cut off the end of an ingot, thus being a piece of that ingot, and struck), and the chronology is probably wrong for a phonetic influence. https://www.etymonline.com/word/piece says "piece" for a coin is "c. 1400", which would be about 200 years older than the earliest attested occurrence of "piece of eight" and 100 years older than the peso itself, which was introduced in 01497. However, the earliest attestation given in https://archive.org/details/oed07arch/page/836/mode/1up?view... is from 01575, in Scots: "To be payit all in half mark pecis," and the first attestation of "piece of eight" is from 01610: "Round trunkes, Furnish'd with pistolets, and pieces of eight." Maybe Etymonline knows of a much earlier attestation? Because if "piece" in the sense of "coin" really didn't come into use until the late 16th century, a phonetic influence would be much more plausible. ______ †"Peso", like "poise", is from Latin "pensum", "weight", which may be from "pensare", the frequentative of "pendere", "to hang, to weigh", while "piece" comes from Latin "petia" or "pecia", "fragment". In Spanish today "peso" is still the normal word for "weight" (and "pesar" is the normal verb for "weigh") and "pieza" is still a fairly common word for "fragment". |