What 闫 means
Related, but the exact spelling matters in names. 閻 was defined in Shuowen, an early Chinese character dictionary, as “a gate within a neighborhood.” Taiwan’s variant dictionary records 閆 as a variant of 閻 and cites related forms in Dunhuang and Song–Yuan sources. As a surname, it marks a family line, not a gate. As of 2026, no source checked here establishes 闫’s first attestation.
In 1977, a second-round simplification used 闫 for 阎; the State Council stopped it in 1986. Unicode’s status entry records 闫 in people’s names and maps it to 阎. Use the form the person gives you.
Personal-name spelling: neutral as a surname, exact in records and introductions.
Do not “fix” 闫 to 阎 when copying a person’s name.
Questions people ask
1Why does 闫 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type 闫
闫\95EBCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.