User blog comment:PinkVickiKat/How Did You Come Up With Your Username/@comment-27523417-20160117042642

Yanagi can be a female given name (although it's more often used as a surname) and contains "yan".

There aren't really any Japanese names that would be shortened to "Yan-chan", due to a quirk of the language, but it comes closer than Ayano (which is mostly shortened to Aya-chan).