Yan

At the 2020 census, 16,716 Americans bore the surname Yan — 2,105th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 17,900.

By the numbers

People: 16,716
Rank: 2,105th
How common: 1 in 17,900
Per 100,000: 5.6

Where the name comes from

Origin Mandarin

From the cmn-pinyin romanization.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Yan described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 94.6%
White, not Hispanic 2.6%
Hispanic or Latino 1.3%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 1.1%
Black, not Hispanic 0.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.01%

Notable people called Yan

Mo Yan (born 1955)Chinese novelist and screenwriter
Yan Fu (1854–1921)Chinese translator
Yan Zi (born 1984)Chinese tennis player
Yan Lianke (born 1958)Chinese novelist and satirist
Cai Yan (177–249)3rd century Chinese poet and musician
Petr Yan (born 1993)Russian mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter
Yan Hui (520 BC–480 BC)Chinese philosopher (c. 521–481 BC)
Zou Yan (304 BC–239 BC)Zhou Dynasty philosopher

People named Yan with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Yan

Also a first name

Yan has been given to 1,085 American babies as a first name since 1971, peaking in 2025. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.