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

479 names · page 16 of 20

Somel
“solid hand”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Somer
“true and solid man”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Somnur
“pure light”
Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Sonad
“last name”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Sonalp
“last-born hero”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Sonat
“sonata”
From French · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Sonay
“last moon”
Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Sonbay
“last-born lord”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Sondal
“last-born child”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Soner
“last-born man”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Songun
“last one; inclination, talent”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Songurhan
“gyrfalcon khan”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Songurkan
“of gyrfalcon lineage”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Sönmez
“unfading, never extinguished”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Sönmezalp
“undying hero”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial

Sönmezay
“never-fading moon”
Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Sönmezer
“undying man”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Sonnur
“last light”
Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Sonsen
“you are the last”
Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Sonsuz
“endless, eternal”
Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Soral
“ask and take”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Şoray
“countenance, face, appearance”
From Mongolian · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesDocumented
Sorgun
“a kind of willow; tight and firm; long beautiful hair”
Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Sorkun
“mountain ridges and slopes; wild mountain willow”
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.