(1) "Institution" in Mandarin. Used for the five main bureaus of Chiang Kai‑shek's Nationalist government: the Executive, Legislative, Control, judicial, Examination yuan. (2) A monetary unit of China; also known as Chinese dollars.
Chinese surname ranked 37th in China by population.Chinese surnames pronounced "yuán" which still exist include: è¢, å…ƒ, 圆, æº, 原, 垣; surnames that can be transliterated as "yuan" regardless of the tone include: 渊, é , è‹‘, 院, 冤. Of these, only the first (the subject of this article) is ranked in the top 100 of Chinese surnames in terms of population. In modern times, the others have declined to less than 0.10% of the total Chinese population.