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Yen and yuan sign

currency sign (U+00A5) used for the Japanese yen (JPY) or the Chinese yuan renmibi (CNY): a capital Y with two horizontal strokes (or sometimes just one for the yuan)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ249321 ↗
Source-derived summary

The yen and yuan sign (¥) is a currency sign used to represent the base units yen (Japanese yen) and the Chinese yuan (renminbi) when writing in the Latin script. This character resembles a capital letter Y with a single or double horizontal stroke. The symbol is usually placed before the value it represents, for example: ¥50, or JP¥50 and CN¥50 when disambiguation is needed. When written in Japanese and Chinese, the Japanese kanji or Chinese character follows the amount, for example 50円 in Japan and 50元 or 50圆 in China.

History

Japan

After the institution of Japan's New Currency Act, from 1871 through the early 20th century, the yen was either referred to (in documents printed in Latin script) by its full name yen, or abbreviated with a capital "Y". One of the earliest uses of ¥ can be found in J. Twizell Wawn's "Japanese Municipal Government With an Account of the Administration of the City of Kobe", published in 1899. Usage of the sign increased in the early 20th century, primarily in Western English-speaking countries, but has become commonly used in Japan as well.

Code points

The Unicode code point is U+00A5 ¥ YEN SIGN (¥). Additionally, there is a full width character, ￥, at code point U+FFE5 ￥ FULLWIDTH YEN SIGN for use with wide fonts, especially East Asian fonts.

There was no code-point for any ¥ symbol in the original (7-bit) US-ASCII and consequently many early systems reassigned 5C (allocated to the backslash (\) in ASCII) to the yen sign.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Yen and yuan sign” is currency sign (U+00A5) used for the Japanese yen (JPY) or the Chinese yuan renmibi (CNY): a capital Y with two horizontal strokes (or sometimes just one for the yuan). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through yuan, sign and currency, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1871, 1899—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, yuan, sign and currency is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “currency sign (U+00A5) used for the Japanese yen (JPY) or the Chinese yuan renmibi (CNY): a capital Y with two horizontal strokes (or sometimes just one for the yuan)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q249321. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1871 and 1899.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Yen and yuan sign”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Yen and yuan sign primary sources, Yen and yuan sign archive and yuan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Yen and yuan sign” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.