What the other comment said is 100% correct, and it's a bit puzzling situation.
- in Japanese language:
- JPY: 円(*en*, "circle") and '￥'
- RMB: 元(*gehn*, "root, origin"), "人民元(*jinmin gen*), or "RMB"
- in Chinese language:
- RMB: 元(*yuan*) and *the same* '￥'
- JPY: 日元(*righ-yuan*) and "JPY", and sometimes the same '￥'
- Character 圓:
- is used for old JPY and all RMB notes
- is a traditional, homophonic equivalent of 円 in Japanese and 元 in Chinese
So if something is in:
- "yuan" -> RMB, "人民元" -> RMB
- "yen" -> JPY, "円" -> JPY, "日元" -> JPY
- `0x5c`, "￥", "元", it depends(元 is more likely RMB)
Two obvious questions are "why they don't make their own double-struck R symbol" and "why Chinese language mixes up 円 and 元 when there are two perfectly serviceable unambiguous characters". The former, I don't know. Most currency symbols are Unicode anyway so 元 might work? The latter is the most puzzling part. Maybe it's just not-invented-here response to 円 character. But it's a foreign symbol! I've never heard they have issues with existence of the dollar sign itself than what it sometimes represent in some contexts.
It’s a misnomer as there is the Chinese Renminbi, known as the yuan. The yen and yuan have similar/same symbol. So people confuse the two as Japanese Yen and Chinese Yen even though that isn’t remotely correct.
When you use just “yen” it should be always known as the Japanese currency. There should be no need for clarification.
The confusion maybe comes from misunderstanding of history as the yuan (yoo-ahn) and yen both can mean “round”, like a coin.
thanks I didn't know that, I typed yen into XE.com's input and it suggested 3 currencies, Japanese first, it was a bit dark and didn't have my glasses so I didn't see that Chinese was Chinese Yuan, I had a minor memory that China also used "Yen" as name of their currency, from some time in high school I suppose, and so I took it as being that.
One suggestion was also Yemen so probably the input has some Levenshtein distance awareness to it
