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

169 names · page 2 of 8

Nasıf
“divider into two halves; one half”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nasiha
“one who gives advice”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Nasip
“share, portion; lot”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Nasır
“helper, supporter”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Tatar, Bashkir
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Naşit
“reciter of poetry”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nasiye
“one who forgets”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Nasrettin
“help of the faith”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Nasri
“relating to victory through God's help”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nasrullah
“help of God”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Nasuh
“sincere adviser”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nasuhi
“sincerely repentant”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Natık
“articulate, eloquent”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Natuk
“eloquent”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Natuvan
“weak, powerless”
From Persian · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Nayman
“eight; a Mongol tribal group”
From Mongolic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial

Nazar
“gaze, look”
From Arabic · Turkish, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tatar, Bashkir
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Nazbike
“coy girl”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Nazıdil
“coyness of the heart”
From Persian · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Nazif
“clean, pure”
From Arabic · Turkish, Tatar
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nazım
“arranger; composer of verse”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Azerbaijani, Tatar
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Nazlım
“my darling, my cherished coy one”
Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Nazmi
“orderly; of verse”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nebahattin
“glory and honor of the faith”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy4 syllablesEditorial
Nebih
“famous; noble”
From Arabic · 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.