Language guide

Turkish Names: Meanings, Origins & Traditions

Turkish names are recorded here in the modern Turkish Latin alphabet, which replaced the Arabic-based Ottoman script in 1928. Because Ottoman Turkish absorbed a large Arabic and Persian vocabulary, many familiar Turkish names, such as Elif or Emir, go back to Arabic or Persian words, while others, such as Arslan or Aynur, contain native Turkic elements. Each entry states which of these applies, based on the cited sources.

Türkçe

Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family

Published names: 7961
Scripts in our data: Latin
ISO 639-1: tr

Browse Turkish names

357 names · page 11 of 15

Gülşerif
“noble rose”
From Persian and Arabic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsev
“rose lover”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Gülseven
“one who loves roses”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsever
“one who loves roses”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsevi
“rose love”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsevil
“beloved rose”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsevin
“joyful rose”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsezer
“perceptive rose”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsezin
“perceptive rose”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gulsim
“silver rose”
From Persian · Turkish, Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Gülsima
“rose-faced”
From Persian · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsimin
“silver rose”
From Persian · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsinem
“rose in my bosom”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsoy
“rose lineage”
Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Gülsu
“rose water”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial

Gülsüm
“chubby-cheeked, plump-faced”
Turkish, Uyghur, Azerbaijani
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gülsüme
“round, plump-faced”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsun
“chubby-cheeked, plump-faced”
Turkish, Uyghur
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gülsunam
“I offer a rose”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsunan
“one who offers roses”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülsunar
“she offers roses”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gültab
“radiant rose”
From Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Gültaç
“rose crown”
From Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Gültan
“rose + dawn”
From Classical Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesLikely

How Turkish names are written

Modern Turkish uses a 29-letter Latin alphabet introduced in 1928. Letters such as ç, ğ, ı, İ, ö, ş and ü matter for spelling: Gülnur and Gulnur are different spellings, and the dotless ı is a separate letter from i. Search on this site ignores these marks, but entries always show the documented spelling.

Where Turkish names come from

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

Turkic
4158
Arabic
2170
Persian
1209
Greek
42
Mongolic
39
Hebrew
28
French
14

Counted from 7961 published entries. Each name page explains its own etymology with sources.

Turkish names by meaning

Turkish belongs to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages, together with Azerbaijani and Turkmen. Related languages share many words, but a name is listed under a language only when it is documented there.

Other languages: Uyghur · Kazakh · Kyrgyz · Uzbek · Tatar · Bashkir · Tajik

References for this page

Wikipedia contributors. Turkic languages. Wikimedia Foundation, revision 1377797900. Accessed 2026-10-28. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Wikipedia contributors. Turkish alphabet. Wikimedia Foundation, revision 1381762599. Accessed 2026-10-28. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.