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.
- Published names
- 7961
- Scripts in our data
- Latin
- ISO 639-1
- tr
Browse Turkish names
6,152 names · page 170 of 257
- “mature arrow”TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “strong and swift like an arrow”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “mighty arrow”TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow khan”TurkishUnisex2 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow blood”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “spider”From Arabic · TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “resemblance; resembling”TurkishUnisex2 syllablesEditorial
- “shoot the arrow”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “the arrow was loosed”TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “the arrow has been loosed”TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “count the arrows”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “love the arrow”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow lover”TurkishUnisex3 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow lover”TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow water”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow dawn”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “archer”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow stone”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow foal”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow standard”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow bronze”TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow law”TurkishUnisex3 syllablesEditorial
- “arrow that has arisen”TurkishBoy4 syllablesEditorial
- “wise, strong Turk”TurkishBoy2 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):
- Turkic4158
- Arabic2170
- Persian1209
- Greek42
- Mongolic39
- Hebrew28
- French14
Counted from 7961 published entries. Each name page explains its own etymology with sources.
Turkish names by meaning
Explore related languages
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.

