Given name & surname
Yen
“one who is desired”
Yen is used as a given name and a surname. One Chinese interpretation is “one who is desired.”
Meaning & origin
What it means
One Chinese interpretation is “one who is desired.”
Where it comes from
An origin associated with this spelling is Chinese.
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 1975. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
Yen through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 611
- 47 boys · 564 girls
- Most popular year
- 1982
- 33 babies
- 2025
- 0
- Outside the ranked list
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- —
- Too few births to compare
By the numbers
The most recent published U.S. birth count for girls is 5 in 2022. Later missing counts do not mean the name went unused. Its largest published annual count for girls was 33 in 1982. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 8,818 as a first name in 2020; 5,259 as a surname in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Yen’s family of names
Yen has a related form in Yenny. Yen has a related form in Yeni. Yen has a related form in Yeny.
Inner ring: spellings · middle: nicknames and forms · outer: across languages.
Nicknames & forms 5
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
Spellings & scripts 2
The same name written differently, including transliterations into other scripts.
Across languages 1
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
People named Yen
Listed by how widely each person is written about, which says nothing about the name itself.
Appears in
Similar names
If you love Yen, these share its style, era, origin or sound, from outside its own family.
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Song is a surname from Mandarin.
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