Japanese Yen - Pronunciation and Etymology

Pronunciation and Etymology

Yen is pronounced "en" in Japanese. The word (Shinjitai: 円, Kyūjitai: 圓) literally means "round" in Japanese, as yuán does in Chinese or won in Korean. Originally, Chinese had traded silver in mass (see sycee) and when Spanish and Mexican silver coins arrived, the Chinese called them 銀圓 (silver round) for their circular shapes. The coins and the name also appeared in Japan. Later, the Chinese replaced 圓 with 元 which has the same pronunciation in Mandarin (but not in Japanese). The Japanese preferred 圓 which remains until now (albeit in its simplified form, 円, since the end of World War II).

The spelling and pronunciation "yen" is standard in English. This is because mainly English speakers who visited Japan at the end of the Edo period to the early Meiji period spelled words this way. ゑん/wen/ in historical kana orthography. In the 16th century, Japanese /e/(え) and /we/(ゑ) both had been pronounced and Portuguese missionaries had spelled them "ye". Some time thereafter, by the middle of the 18th century, /e/ and /we/ came to be pronounced as in modern Japanese, although some regions retain the pronunciation. Walter Henry Medhurst, who had not come to Japan and met any Japanese, having consulted mainly a Japanese-Dutch dictionary, spelled some "e"s as "ye" in his An English and Japanese, and Japanese and English Vocabulary (1830). In the early Meiji era, James Curtis Hepburn, following Medhurst, spelled all "e"s as "ye" in his A Japanese and English dictionary (1st ed. 1867). That was the first full-scale Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary, which had a strong influence on Westerners in Japan and probably prompted the spelling "yen". Hepburn revised most of "ye"s to "e" in the 3rd edition (1886) in order to mirror the contemporary pronunciation, except "yen". This was probably already fixed and has remained so ever since.