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 9 of 15

Gülhatır
“rose memory”
From Persian and Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülhatun
“rose lady”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülhayat
“rose life”
From Persian and Arabic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Gülhiz
“rose grower”
From Persian · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Gülhuri
“rose houri”
From Persian and Arabic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülinci
“rose pearl”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülipek
“rose silk”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülistan
“flower garden, rose garden”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Güliz
“rose trace”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Gülizar
“flower garden, flower gardens”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Gülkadın
“rose woman”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülkan
“rose blood”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Gülkız
“rose + girl”
From Classical Persian and Proto-Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesLikely
Güllü
“with roses”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Güllühan
“rosy khan”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial

Güllüşah
“rosy shah”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Güllüşan
“rosy glory”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülmisal
“rose-like”
From Persian and Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülmüş
“smiling, cheerful-faced”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Gulnar
“pomegranate flower”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Uzbek, Azerbaijani
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gülnarə
“pomegranate blossom”
From Persian · Turkish, Azerbaijani
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülnazik
“violet”
From Persian · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülneşe
“rose joy”
From Persian and Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülnihal
“newly opened flower; flower-faced, flower-like”
Turkish, Uyghur
Girl3 syllablesDocumented

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.