Armenian dram sign

The Armenian dram sign (֏, image: ; Armenian: Դրամ; code: AMD) is the currency sign of the Armenian dram. In Unicode, it is encoded at U+058F ֏ ARMENIAN DRAM SIGN (HTML ֏).

After its proclamation of independence, Armenia put into circulation its own national currency – Armenian Dram, the usage of which revealed the necessity for a monetary sign. As the result of common business practice and the unique pattern of Armenian letters the shape of the sign and its variations appeared in the business scratches (daybooks). Since that time and until the official endorsement of the sign a number of artists and businessmen developed and offered various shapes for it. Now the Sign (Dram symbol) is present in the Armenian standard for the national characters and symbols and in the Armenian computer fonts.

There is a strong belief that the shape of Dram Sign (symbol) is a direct projection of the Armenian alphabet – the work of Mesrop Mashtots. It is not hard to notice the clean-cut geometry of the Armenian letters, so did the author of the Sign when studied the alphabet. Later he became a proponent for the hypothesis, which states that the prototype of the Armenian alphabet is a variety of combinations of the resembling curves and the horizontal elements. Subsequently, these horizontal elements played a key role in the Sign development.

Apparently, the sign emerged on 7 September 1995. This date refers to a page in the preserved scratches for cash flow of a start-up company. Since that date the sign together with the dollar sign is constantly present in cash flow records (euro was not in circulation yet), and no evidences for earlier dates are tendered by anybody yet.

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