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

13 names

İbrahim
“Abraham (name of the patriarch and prophet)”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Tatar, Bashkir
Boy3 syllablesDocumented
İdil
“the Volga river”
From Turkic · Turkish, Bashkir
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Idris
“sower of seed, farmer”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Tatar
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Ihsan
“kindness, excellence”
From Arabic · Turkish, Tatar, Bashkir
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
İlham
“inspiration”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Tatar, Bashkir
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
İlyas
“Elijah (name of the prophet)”
From Arabic (from Greek and Hebrew) · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Tatar, Bashkir
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Imat
“pillar, column”
From Arabic · Turkish, Kazakh
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Ira
“inner nature, character; face, appearance”
From Turkic · Turkish, Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Isa
“God saves”
From Classical Persian and Arabic · Turkish, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Bashkir
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
İshak
“Isaac (name of the patriarch and prophet)”
From Hebrew · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Uzbek, Azerbaijani
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
İskender
“Alexander (Arabic-Persian form of the name)”
From European · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Bashkir
Boy3 syllablesDocumented
İslam
“Islam; submission to God”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Tatar, Bashkir
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Ismet
“to protect; pure, sinless”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh
Boy2 syllablesDocumented

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.