I don’t follow the European stock markets but from time to time see and hear them referred to as a Bourse. Ever wonder where that term comes from? Googling doesn’t easily provide an answer.
Turns out it’s a family name. The real story is related to the true stories of the original stock markets trading under a tree in a square or on a street. Turns out stock markets were not invented in Amsterdam or London, but began hundreds of years earlier in Bruges, which today is in Belgium.
And specifically in the 14th Century, in the Beursplein, a open-air square in town. But only when the weather was nice. When it rained, trading moved indoors to Ter Beurse Inn (established in 1285), a coffee house owned by the van der Beurse family, a prominent Flemish family.
Beurse became Bourse and stock markets grew to be large enough to operate in their own buildings, rather than coffee houses.
