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

613 names · page 20 of 26

Tufan
“storm, flood”
From Arabic · Turkish, Tatar
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğ
“horsehair plume of rank; standard”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex1 syllableEditorial
Tuğal
“red standard”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğalp
“standard-bearing hero”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğaltan
“standard of the red dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tuğaltay
“standard of the Altai”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tugay
“brigade”
From Turkish · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesLikely
Tuğbay
“brigade-commanding colonel (old rank)”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğcu
“bearer of the horsehair standard”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğhan
“khan of the banner”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğkan
“standard of the blood line”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğkun
“inaccessible without leave; wealthy and esteemed”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğlu
“bearing a banner”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğra
“Ottoman imperial monogram”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğrul
“bird of prey, falcon”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial

Tuğrultekin
“raptor prince”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex4 syllablesEditorial
Tuğsan
“standard of renown”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğsav
“word of the standard”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğsavaş
“standard of war”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tuğsavul
“standard, clear the way”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tuğsavun
“defender of the standard”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tuğsel
“flood of the standard”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğser
“head of the standard”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tuğtaş
“standard stone”
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.