Yuán
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Hanyu Pinyin reading of 元 (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
Yuán is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CNChina≈1 in 250(inferred from the name graph)
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 1.1K
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 3.6Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 372 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 245 (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,700,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Yuan in US United States, CN China, AU Australia and 4 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Hanyu Pinyin reading of 元
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Yuán is found
(measured from records)Yuán counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | #623 | ≈5,700,000 est. | ≈1 in 245 | — | Yuan | 186 |
| TW Taiwan | #337 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Yuan | 140 |
| US United States | — | 8,588 | 1 in 39K | 13K | Yuan | 372 |
| MY Malaysia | #493 | ≈7,500 est. | ≈1 in 4.7K | — | Yuan | 66 |
| AU Australia | #849 | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Yuan | 166 |
| HK Hong Kong | #253 | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Yuan | 58 |
| SG Singapore | #446 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Yuan | 92 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Yuan Longpingb. 1929CNChinese biologist (1930-2021)
- Eric S. Yuanb. 1970CNAmerican billionaire businessman
- Ron Yuanb. 1973USAmerican actor
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Yuán mean, and where does it come from?
- Hanyu Pinyin reading of 元 Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Yuán?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.7 million people named Yuán in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled yuan. After it come Taiwan, United States, Malaysia and Australia; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Yuán?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,588 people named Yuán in 2010, about 1 in 39 thousand residents.
- How common is Yuán compared with other names?
- In China, Yuán is the 623rd most common surname of 142,871 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Yuán?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/yu%C3%A1nThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Yuán” — the 623rd most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.