Yan is a surname in several languages and the pinyin romanization for several Chinese surnames, including "严 (嚴)", "晏 (晏)", "偃 (偃)", "颜 (顏)", "言 (言)", "燕 (燕)", "阎 (閻)", "闫 (閆)", "鄢 (鄢)" in simplified (traditional) form.
These characters are romanised as Yen in the Wade–Giles romanization system which was commonly used before the early 80s. As such, individuals and institutions who had to romanize their Chinese names prior to that time, such as when having their books translated or publishing manuscripts outside of China, used "Yen" instead of "Yan". Such examples include Yenching University and the Harvard-Yenching Institute. The Yan surname in Taiwan is mostly spelled as Yen since only until recently has the government approved the use of pinyin romanization of names. The Cantonese romanization of these surnames is "Yim". As such, most people from Hong Kong and Chinese diaspora that emigrated prior to 1949 from Guangdong use the name Yim.
On many occasions, the surname "甄 (甄)" is also romanized as Yan in Cantonese. This name in Mandarin is romanized as Zhēn, see Zhen (surname).
Yan is also an alternative spelling of the Breton name Yann.
Latin alphabet
Amanda Yan, (born 1988), Canadian athlete, in wheelchair basketball and other sports
Esteban Yan, (born 1975), Dominican baseball pitcher
Yan You was the first king of the Xiao Zhu and was originally known as Cao You. His ancestor was called Yan An who inherited a piece of land, which later flourished into the Zhu kingdom, a feudal state of Lu. According to the judicial rules of that time, Cao You had to give up his surname in order to ascend the throne. He adopted his father Yi Fu's style name Bo Yan. From then on Cao You was known as Yan You. This officially made Yan You the first Yan in Chinese history.[1]Yan An was the son of Luzhong (陸終), grandson of Zhurong clan and Wuhui (吳回). Zhurong was said to be the son of Gaoyang (also known as Zhuanxu), a sky god. Zhuanxu was a grandson of the Yellow Emperor.
This page lists people with the surnameYan. If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.
