On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c3.8

v1.c3.8

It is quite clear from the above that in the Chinese pronunciation of the first part of the name there is now nothing approaching to an English H. And of course Julien never intended to represent that sound by his transliteration. Initial H being practically silent in French, his Hiouen is really equal to Iouen, that is, to what would be expressed by Yuan in the scientific system of transliteration now being adopted for all Oriental languages. But the vowel following the initial letter is like the German ü, or the French u, so that Yüan would, for Indianists, express the right pronunciation of this form of the word. It is particularly encouraging to the important cause of a generally intelligible system of transliteration to find that this is precisely the spelling adopted by Sir Thomas Wade.