I looked up the history of Chinese Dynasty.
Xia, Yin, Zhou, Warring Times
Qin, Han, Three Kingdoms, Jin
Sixteen Countries, Southern Northern, Sui, Tang
Five, Song, Jin
Yuan, Ming, Qing
Hum? What's 'Yuan'? Were there such Dynasty in China?
I clicked the name and found that the Dynasty was established by Mongolians.
Of course I know it's a famous 'Gen Dynasty' in Japanese.
'Yuan' means circle and 'Gen' means origin, both means favourable. But why such difference?
It originally means circle and prononciation is yuan. Khubilai may have named it so as the shape of his coutry was so chubby, but a Chinese simplified character happend to be the same as Japanese made character 'Gen' so Japanese started calling it gen instead of yuan.
Same thing happened in Chinese yuan for currency. Japanese call gen instead.
I am ashamed. But it's true many words are being used in different sense when they entered other languages. This is one of strange examples.
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