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

376 names · page 10 of 16

Güleğen
“cheerful”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Gülek
“smiling, cheerful; small pool of water; herd of horses”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Gülel
“rose land”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Gülenay
“smiling moon”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülender
“rare as a rose”
From Persian and Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülener
“smiling man”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Gülengül
“smiling rose”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülergin
“ripe rose”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülergün
“smiling day”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülerman
“smiling, cheerful person”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Gülertan
“luminous dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Güleryüz
“cheerful-faced”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Gülfer
“rose-bright, with the radiance of a rose”
From Persian · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Gülfeza
“rose space”
From Persian and Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülgönül
“rose heart”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial

Gülgüney
“rose of the sunny side”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
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
Gülkan
“rose blood”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Güllühan
“rosy khan”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Güllüşan
“rosy glory”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Gülmen
“one who laughs often”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 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.