Yuan
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Yuan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In English, recorded as The basic unit of money in China.
- CNChina≈1 in 835(inferred from the name graph)
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 1.4K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 4.1K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 372 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 835 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,700,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
The basic unit of money in China.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Yuan is read(measured from records)
Yuan is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English43%
The basic unit of money in China.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
dynasty, China; pers. name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Chinese: the one
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Chinese32%
nonstandard spelling of yuān
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Yuan 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 | ≈1,700,000 est. | ≈1 in 835 | — | Yuan | 186 |
| TW Taiwan | #337 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Yuan | 140 |
| US United States | — | 8,588 | 1 in 39K | 13K | Yuan | 372 |
| MY Malaysia | #493 | ≈6,100 est. | ≈1 in 5.3K | — | Yuan | 66 |
| AU Australia | #849 | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 9.7K | — | Yuan | 166 |
| HK Hong Kong | #253 | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Yuan | 58 |
| SG Singapore | #446 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Yuan is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
‘Shining peace’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Manx form of pJohn.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Yuan Shaob. 154CNHan Dynasty warlord (154-202)
- Yuan Meib. 1716CNpoet, essayist, scholar of the Qing Dynasty (1716-1797)
- Yuan Shikaib. 1859CNChinese military and government official (1859–1916)
- Yuen Siu-tienb. 1912CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor (1912-1979)
- Yuan Longpingb. 1929CNChinese biologist (1930-2021)
- Yuen Woo-pingb. 1945CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong martial arts choreographer and film director
- Corey Yuenb. 1951CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor and film director (1951–2022)
- Roger Yuanb. 1961USAmerican stunt actor
- 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)
Attested in 61 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 13K | #2,732 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.6K | #4,129 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.4K | #5,877 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Yuan mean, and where does it come from?
- The basic unit of money in China. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Yuan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.7 million people named Yuan in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled yuan.
- How common is the name Yuan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,588 people named Yuan in 2010, about 1 in 39 thousand residents.
- How common is Yuan compared with other names?
- In China, Yuan is the 623rd most common surname of 142,871 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Yuan?
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/yuanThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Yuan” — the 623rd most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.