You’ve no doubt heard or used the phrase “raise the tally” or “split the tally” plenty of times. Even if you don’t know the origin of these terms, you can probably gather from the context that they have something to with accounting and are often money related.
A tally refers to a count, but it usually specifically refers to the count of something placed on a stick, which is known as a “tally stick.” The person using the stick simply places marks on it, or tallies, which denotes the count of something. Beginning during the reign of King Henry I of England (1068-1135), the tally stick was used for tax purposes. As the shire sheriffs turned in their tax revenues to the royal Exchequer, marks (tallies) would be made on the stick denoting different amounts. The tally stick system was used until the early 1800s, when more modern accounting methods became easier and more practical to use.
Private individuals also used tally sticks to record economic transactions in medieval Europe.
If two parties made an economic transaction and there was a lack of hard currency available, the transaction would be tallied on a stick and then the stick would be split the long way so that both sides had a record. As the process became more accepted, a slight change was made by making the creditor’s side of the tally stick a little longer, which meant that the debtor always got the “short end of the stick.”
So, this explains how tally sticks were used, as well as the origin of some of the terms we still use today that are associated with economics. But when were tally sticks first used?
The funny thing about tally sticks is that they seem to transcend culture, language, and time. Tally sticks of one type or another have been discovered on every continent and from every historical period. The earliest known tally stick is believed to be a Paleolithic stick, over thirty thousand years old. It was discovered in central Europe and has fifty-five marks on it, which scholars believe was one of the first known tallies used by humanity.
But what would it have tallied? Perhaps Grog the caveman was keeping track of his wives, or the number of woolly mammoths he killed. There is no way to know for sure, but at least now you know what someone means when they say “split/raise the tally” or declares that they’re getting the “short end of the stick.”