The name moidore is derived from Portuguese moeda de ouro, which literally means "golden coin".

He practically had me signed up for the European Monetary System when all I wanted was to touch him for a gold moidore.

The moidore was current in western Europe and the West Indies, particularly Barbados, for a long period after it ceased to be struck.

Charles Lamb in the Essays of Elia says of Thomas Coventry that nor did he look or walk worth a moidore less.

There is reference to the moidore in the John Masefield poem 'Cargoes' - 'Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus - Dipping through the tropics by the palm green shores, With a cargo of diamonds, emeralds, amythysts, topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.'

There is also reference to the moidore in the book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift - 'He, who apprehended I could not live a month, was ready enough to part with me, and demanded a thousand pieces of gold, which were ordered him on the spot, each piece being about the bigness of eight hundred moidores...'