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 4 of 8

Neşecan
“joyful soul”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Neşet
“liveliness, joy”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Neşever
“joy-giving”
Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Nesil
“generation”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nesim
“gentle breeze, pleasant wind”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Nesimî
“gentle, mild-natured”
Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Nesip
“of pure paternal descent”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Neşit
“joyful, cheerful”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nesligül
“of rose lineage”
From Arabic and Persian · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Nevale
“fortune, lot; gift; provisions”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Nevcivan
“young, newly grown”
From Persian · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Nevfel
“sea; a character in the Leyla and Mecnun story”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nevhiz
“newly grown, fresh”
From Persian · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Nevit
“good news”
From Persian · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nevres
“newly sprouted”
From Persian · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial

Nevrettin
“light of the faith”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Nevri
“relating to light”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nevriye
“relating to light”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Nevruz
“new day; Persian New Year”
From Persian · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Nevsal
“new year”
From Persian · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nevzat
“newborn”
From Ottoman Turkish and Classical Persian · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesDocumented
Neyyiri
“luminous, bright”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Neyzen
“ney flute player”
From Persian · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Nezahattin
“purity of the faith”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy4 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.