Renminbi's, or Yuan?

[Randy W]

This article was linked to in the "China overtakes the U.S." thread - I thought I'd post it here. From the BBC News

 

My wife uses the word "dollar" when referring to either Chinese or American currency. This is actually correct English, as the word "dollar" can refer to a unit of any currency.

 

Why China's currency has two names

 

Both names are perfectly good, but in slightly different ways.

 

"Renminbi" is the official name of the currency introduced by the Communist People's Republic of China at the time of its foundation in 1949. It means "the people's currency".

 

"Yuan" is the name of a unit of the renminbi currency. Something may cost one yuan or 10 yuan. It would not be correct to say that it cost 10 renminbi.

An analogy can be drawn with "pound sterling" (the official name of the British currency) and "pound" - a denomination of the pound sterling. Something may cost £1 or £10. It would not be correct to say that it cost 10 sterling.

 

Nor can you talk about the number of renminbi - or the number of sterling - to the dollar.

 

Silver dollars

 

The word "yuan" goes back further than "renminbi". It is the Chinese word for dollar - the silver coin, mostly minted in the Spanish empire, used by foreign merchants in China for some four centuries.

 

. . .

 

The Chinese phrase for the US dollar is "mei yuan", the American yuan. The Japanese and Korean names for their currencies, the yen and the won respectively, are derived from the same Chinese yuan character. The Chinese name for the Japanese yen is the "ri yuan".

 

. . .

 

As it happens, Chinese people rarely talk about renminbi or yuan.

The word they use is "kuai", which literally means "piece", and is the word used historically for coins made of silver or copper.

 

Also common is "10 kuai qian", literally "10 pieces of money".

 

"Kuai" is colloquial, like "quid" in the UK and "buck" in the US, but it is the word used in everyday Mandarin, whether you are in Beijing or Taiwan - which, of course, has its own currency, the new Taiwanese dollar, also known as the yuan.

 

The same thing happens again when you break down your yuan into smaller units, the jiao and the fen (one yuan is equal to 10 jiao and one jiao is equal to 10 fen).

 

There is nothing wrong with the word jiao, it is just that most people use the word mao instead.

 

Anyone suspecting a link between the mao and Chinese former communist leader Mao Zedong would be mistaken.

 

The character is the same as Mao's surname, but the word was used long before he came to prominence.