Language guide

Kazakh Names: Meanings, Origins & Traditions

Kazakh names are listed here in Kazakh Cyrillic, the alphabet used in Kazakhstan, together with any Latin spelling that our sources record. Many Kazakh names are compounds of native words, such as ай 'moon' or жан 'soul', and others come from Arabic and Persian. Kazakhstan has decided to move from Cyrillic to a Latin alphabet, a transition now scheduled to finish by 2031, so Latin spellings of the same name can still vary.

Қазақ тілі

Kipchak branch of the Turkic language family

Published names: 1555
Scripts in our data: Cyrillic, Latin
ISO 639-1: kk

Browse Kazakh names

541 names · page 6 of 23

Ardak
“honoured, cherished”
From Turkic · Kazakh
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Arina
“peace”
From Greek · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Arna
“channel, riverbed”
From Turkic · Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Aru
“beauty, beautiful girl”
From Turkic · Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Arubike
“beautiful lady”
From Turkic · Kazakh
Girl4 syllablesEditorial
Aruzhan
“charming, lovely + soul”
From Turkic and Persian · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Asiya
“one who heals and consoles”
From Arabic · Kazakh, Tatar
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Aslı
“genuine, original”
From Arabic · Turkish, Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Assel
“honey”
From Arabic · Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Assem
“beautiful, graceful”
From Turkic · Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Assembike
“graceful lady”
From Turkic · Kazakh
Girl4 syllablesEditorial
Assemgul
“beautiful + flower”
From Classical Persian and Persian · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Assemkhan
“beautiful + khan (ruler over various Turkic and Mongol peoples in the Middle Ages)”
From Persian and Kipchak · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesLikely
Assyl
“precious, noble”
From Arabic · Kazakh
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Assylai
“precious moon”
From Classical Persian and Proto-Turkic · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial

Assylbike
“noble lady”
From Arabic and Turkic · Kazakh
Girl4 syllablesEditorial
Assylgul
“precious flower”
From Classical Persian · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Assyltan
“precious dawn”
From Arabic and Turkic · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Assyltas
“precious stone”
From Classical Persian and Proto-Turkic · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Assylzada
“noble-born”
From Arabic and Persian · Kazakh
Girl4 syllablesEditorial
Assylzhan
“precious soul”
From Classical Persian · Kazakh
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Atir
“perfume, fragrance”
From Arabic · Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Aygul
“moon + flower”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Bashkir
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Ayjan
“moon + soul”
From Turkic and Persian · Kazakh, Kyrgyz
Girl2 syllablesDocumented

How Kazakh names are written

Kazakh Cyrillic adds letters such as ә, ғ, қ, ң, ө, ұ, ү, һ and і to the Russian alphabet. A 2017 decree started a move to Latin script, later pushed back to 2031. Kazakhs in China, Iran and Afghanistan use an Arabic-based script. Latin forms on this site are shown only where a source records them.

Where Kazakh names come from

A name used in Kazakh is not automatically Kazakh in origin. Here is how the documented origins of the Kazakh names published so far break down (a name with elements from two languages counts under both):

Turkic
722
Arabic
557
Persian
448
Kipchak
65
Hebrew
26
Greek
17
Mongolic
15

Counted from 1555 published entries. Each name page explains its own etymology with sources.

Kazakh names by meaning

Kazakh belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages, together with Kyrgyz, Tatar and Bashkir. Related languages share many words, but a name is listed under a language only when it is documented there.

Other languages: Turkish · Uyghur · Uzbek · Azerbaijani · Turkmen · Tajik

References for this page

Wikipedia contributors. Kazakh alphabets. Wikimedia Foundation, revision 1381145820. Accessed 2026-10-28. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wikipedia contributors. Turkic languages. Wikimedia Foundation, revision 1377797900. Accessed 2026-10-28. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.