Yuan

How to spell yuan

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce yuan

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does yuan mean?

1. nounThe basic unit of money in China, the unit of the renminbi currency.

Yuan in a sentence

• The hotel quoted the room rate in yuan rather than dollars.

• The company reported its profits in yuan before converting them for investors.

Where does yuan come from?

Language of origin: Chinese

The word comes directly from the Mandarin Chinese yuán, written with the character meaning 'round' or 'round object'. It originally described the round silver coins that circulated in China, the shape giving the unit its name in much the same way that the dollar traces back to a coin. As China's monetary system modernised, yuan became the name of the base unit of the renminbi, the official currency of the People's Republic of China, with the renminbi being the name of the currency as a whole and the yuan being the unit in which prices are quoted. English adopted the term in the late nineteenth century as Western trade with China expanded. The same 'round' root also lies behind the names of related East Asian currencies, the Japanese yen and the Korean won, all of which descend from the same Chinese character for a round coin. The spelling trap for English writers is the unusual vowel cluster 'ua', which does not follow normal English patterns and is easy to reorder.

How the word is built

• yuan (from Chinese yuán: round, a round coin)