New York Global Reference

An example of representative money, this 1896 note could be exchanged for five US Dollars worth of silver.The system of commodity money in many instances evolved into a system of representative money. This occurred because banks would issue a paper receipt to their depositors, indicating that the receipt was redeemable for whatever precious goods were being stored (usually gold or silver money). It didn't take long before the receipts were traded as money, because everyone knew they were "as good as gold". Representative paper money made possible the practice of fractional reserve banking, in which bankers would print receipts above and beyond the amount of actual precious metal on deposit.
So in this system, paper currency and non-precious coinage had very little intrinsic value, but achieved significant market value by being backed by a promise to redeem it for a given weight of precious metal, such as silver. This is the origin of the term "British Pound" for instance; it was a unit of money backed by a Tower pound of sterling silver, hence the currency Pound Sterling. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many currencies were based on representative money through use of the gold standard.
Fiat money
Fiat money refers to money that is not backed by reserves of another commodity. The money itself is given value by government fiat (Latin for "let it be done") or decree, enforcing legal tender laws, previously known as "forced tender", whereby debtors are legally relieved of the debt if they (offer to) pay it off in the government's money. By law the refusal of "legal tender" money in favor of some other form of payment is illegal, and has at times in history (Rome under Diocletian, and post-revolutionary France during the collapse of the assignats) invoked the death penalty.
Governments through history have often switched to forms of fiat money in times of need such as war, sometimes by suspending the service they provided of exchanging their money for gold, and other times by simply printing the money that they needed. When governments produce money more rapidly than economic growth, the money supply overtakes economic value. Therefore, the excess money eventually dilutes the market value of all money issued. This is called inflation. See open market operations.
In 1971 the US finally switched to fiat money indefinitely. At this point in time many of the economically developed countries' currencies were fixed to the US dollar (see Bretton Woods Conference), and so this single step meant that much of the western world's currencies became fiat money based.

 

Following the first Gulf War the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, repealed the existing Iraqi fiat currency and replaced it with a new currency. Despite having no backing by a commodity and with no central authority mandating its use or defending its value the old currency continued to circulate within the politically isolated Kurdish regions of Iraq. It became known as the Swiss Dinar. This currency remained relatively strong and stable for over a decade. It was formally replaced following the second Gulf War.
Credit money
Credit money often exists in conjunction with other money such as fiat money or commodity money, and from the user's point of view is indistinguishable from it. Most of the western world's money is credit money derived from national fiat money currencies.
In a modern economy, a bank will lend to borrowers in excess of the reserve it carries at any time, this is known as fractional reserve banking. In doing so, it increases the total money supply above that of the total amount of the fiat money in existence (also known as M0). While a bank will not have access to sufficient cash (fiat money) to meet all the obligations it has to depositors if they wish to withdraw the balance of their cheque accounts (credit money), the majority of transactions will occur using the credit money (cheques and electronic transfers).
Strictly speaking a debt is not money, primarily because debt can not act as a unit of account. All debts are denominated in units of something external to the debt. However, credit money certainly acts as a substitute for money when it is used in other functions of money (medium of exchange and store of value).

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Indo-European and Semitic etymology
The origin of the word "money" comes from the Latin word "moneta", an epithet of Juno (Hera) -- Juno Moneta, "June the Alone" -- the deity that protected and oversaw finances in the early days of Rome.
In Greek language, "Hera Mone tas" means the lonely Hera ("Mone tas" in Doric Greek, "Mone tes" in Ionic dialect). Zeus punished Hera and tied her with a golden chain between the earth and sky. Hera, because she was alone between the sky and earth tied with gold, was called moneres or mone (μόνη) (lonely in Greek), and the word money was derived from this. Hera, with the help of Hephaestus, broke the golden chain and released herself. It is said that all gold found on earth (which forms approximately a single cube 20 m a side) originates from the fragments of this golden chain, which fall from the sky and became human's mone (money).
Perhaps because of this fable, gold was used in ancient Greece only in temples, graves and jewels and there is not any ancient Greek golden coin, until the days around 390 BC, when the Greek king Philip II of Macedon minted golden coins. The first golden coins in history were coined by Lydian king Croesus, around 560 BC. The first Greek coins were made initially of copper, then of iron because copper and iron were powerful materials used to make weapons.

 

 

Pheidon king of Argos, around 700 BC, changed the coins from iron to a rather useless and ornamental metal, silver, and, according to Aristotle, dedicated some of the remaining iron coins (which were actually iron sticks) to the temple of Hera. King Pheidon coined the silver coins at Aegina, at the temple of the goddess of wisdom and war Athena the Aphaia (the vanisher), and engraved the coins with a Chelone, which is to this day as a symbol of capitalism. Chelone coins were the first medium of exchange that was not backed by a real value good. They were widely accepted and used as the international medium of exchange until the days of Peloponnesian War, when the Athenian Drachma replace them. According other fables, inventors of money were Demodike(or Hermodike) of Kymi (the wife of Midas), Lykos (son of Pandion II and ancestor of the Lycians) and Erichthonius, the Lydians or the Naxians.
The Romans of the late Republic had their own alternative theories for why the Temple of Juno was known as Juno Moneta. Cicero, and others, claimed the epithet was of goddess, in honor of Juno's role as warder (monitor) who sent warnings to Rome, often through her geese; alternately, the name could be the name of the temple itself, Juno of the Hill (mons, montis).
It is very unusual for someone to share his money with others and let them know where his/her money is, almost everyone wants to be alone in front of it and tries to hide it and protect it from others. Everyone is alone in front of money, and money makes everyone to be alone. So the etymology of money deriving from the Greek μόνη (lonely) makes sense.

 

 

The word money in Greek language is not μόνη (money), it is νόμισμα (nomisma or numisma) which derives from the word νομίζω (nomizo=putative, I think so, I suppose so) and from the word νόμος (nomos=law). So numisma gives the exact meaning and definition of mone(y). It is something we think has value, or something which someone has convinced us has, but in reality has not.  In case we are unconvinced that mone(y) has value and we do not recognize the mone(y) maker authority, mone(y) is also something that we are enforced by law to use it as the unique medium of exchange in trades.