The thaler was a silver coin used throughout Europe for almost four hundred years. Its name lives on in the many currencies called dollar and, until recently, also in the Slovenian tolar. To begin with, the name "thaler" was used as an abbreviation of "Joachimsthaler", a coin type from the town of Joachimsthal in the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire, where there were silver mines and the first such coins were minted in 1518. The original thaler carried a lion, from the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Bohemia, on its reverse side as well as the Dutch daalders, the leeuwendaalder ("lion thaler"). From an abbreviation of that name come those of three present-day Balkan currencies, the Romanian and Moldovan Leu and the Bulgarian Lev.