Yan in the name means tiger.
Yan generally refers to Yan surname. Yan surname, one of the surnames in China, is a variant of "Yan" and two simplified characters, ranking fifty-second among the surnames in contemporary China, with a population of more than 4.2 million, accounting for 0.35% of the national population. Yan clan people are mainly distributed in the north of the Yangtze River, mostly in Shandong, Hebei and Shanxi.