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

223 names · page 8 of 10

Tuğçe
“little tuğ (horsehair standard)”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğkun
“inaccessible without leave; wealthy and esteemed”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğrultekin
“raptor prince”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex4 syllablesEditorial
Tuğsavun
“defender of the standard”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tuğyan
“overflowing; surging”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tuhfe
“gift, rarity”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tükelay
“full moon”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tülay
“tulle moon”
From French and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tulca
“fine as tulle”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tülcan
“soul of tulle”
From French and Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Tülen
“young woman with her first child; one-year-old kidding goat”
From Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Tülinay
“moon of Tülin”
Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Tumay
“full moon”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tümcan
“whole soul”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tümerkan
“brave, heroic”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial

Tümhan
“khan of all”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tümkut
“very fortunate, blessed”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tün
“night”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex1 syllableEditorial
Tuna
“the Danube river”
From Ottoman Turkish · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesDocumented
Tunacan
“Danube soul”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tünay
“moon of the night”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tünaydın
“good evening”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tunca
“the Tunca river, a Maritsa tributary”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tuncal
“red bronze”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial

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.