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

444 names · page 6 of 19

Kargınalp
“exuberant, overflowing hero”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Karhan
“snow khan”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Karık
“garden bed for vegetables; mixed, tangled”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Karındaş
“sibling”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Karlık
“snow pit, a hollow for storing snow”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Karlu
“snowy”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Karluk
“a Turkic tribe”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Karlukhan
“khan of the Karluks”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Karsel
“snow torrent”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Kartal
“eagle”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Kartay
“elder, aged person”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Kartekin
“snow prince”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Kasal
“pride, boasting”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Kasar
“regard, feeling, sake”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Kâşif
“discoverer”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial

Kasım
“divider, distributor”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Azerbaijani, Tatar, Bashkir
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Kasırga
“violent storm; surge of emotion”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Katı
“hard, firm; very; severe”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Kâtibe
“female scribe”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Katıhan
“firm ruler”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Kâtip
“scribe”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Katun
“empress; lady”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Kavas
“archer; arrow-maker”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Kavçın
“guest”
From 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.