What 阎 means
Usually a surname, not a standalone word for hell. The early dictionary Shuowen defines it as a neighborhood gate, a small gate into a lane or walled neighborhood. Surname histories give several fief-based origins for Yan. The hell reading belongs to later compounds: 阎王, the king of the underworld, and 阎罗, short for Yama.
Should I write 阎, 閻, or 闫?
Match the form to the script and the person's name. 閻 is the traditional form used in Traditional Chinese; 阎 is its simplified form. 闫 was adopted in the 1977 second simplification scheme; after that scheme was withdrawn, some families kept 闫, so never silently correct someone's surname.
Neutral as a surname; literary or religious in compounds.
Do not translate a person's surname as “hell.”
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does 阎 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 阎
阎\960ECodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.