Ion Heliade Radulescu and Dionisie Pop Martian opposed the name "român" due to potential confusing constructions such as "o suta de români pe un bou" (one hundred Romanians for an ox).

The law introduced a new unit of account, named leu, after the Dutch lion thaler, which had circulated in the Danubian principalities for a long time.

One of these attempts, dating from 1859 to 1860, was initiated by Alexandru Ioan Cuza, the elected Ruling Prince of the United Principalities.

The consul of the French Empire in Iași, Victor Place, a philo-Romanian, backed the project, and the prince managed to secure a loan of 60 million francs to finance the minting process.

In this context, the western European powers, and especially emperor Napoleon III could not fully endorse the introduction of the project currency, due to a potential conflict with the Ottoman Empire.

[4] A first series of patterns were drawn in 1860 by the French numismatist Adrien Prévost de Longpérier, curator at the numismatic cabinet of the Louvre Museum, a friend of Victor Place.