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 11 of 23

Gulnar
“pomegranate flower”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Uzbek, Azerbaijani
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gulnara
“pomegranate blossom”
From Persian · Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Tatar, Bashkir
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gulnissa
“flower among women”
From Persian and Arabic · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülnur
“flower + light”
From Persian and Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Bashkir
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gulnura
“flower light”
From Persian and Arabic · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gulsara
“rose; flower + clear, bright, lucid”
From Persian and Classical Persian · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Gulshara
“flower + measure”
From Classical Persian · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Gulshat
“flower + joyful, cheerful”
From Classical Persian · Kazakh, Tatar, Bashkir
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gulsheker
“flower sugar”
From Persian · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gulsim
“silver rose”
From Persian · Turkish, Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Gulstan
“land of flowers”
From Persian · Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Gulzada
“flower-born”
From Persian · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gulzara
“flower garden”
From Persian · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gulzhamal
“flower beauty”
From Persian and Arabic · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gulzhan
“flower + soul”
From Classical Persian · Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesDocumented

Gulzhaukhar
“flower jewel”
From Persian · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gulzhenis
“flower of victory”
From Persian and Turkic · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Iba
“politeness, courtesy”
From Arabic · Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesLikely
Ibagul
“girl like a flower”
Uyghur, Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Ibaly
“modest, well-mannered”
From Arabic and Turkic · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Inkar
“refusal, denial”
From Arabic · Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Inzhu
“pearl”
From Turkic · Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Ira
“inner nature, character; face, appearance”
From Turkic · Turkish, Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Irada
“will, determination”
From Arabic · Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesEditorial

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.