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

18 names

Gül
“rose”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur
Girl1 syllableDocumented
Gülbahar
“rose (flower) + spring”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Tatar, Bashkir
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Gulbanu
“lady like a flower”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Gülbeden
“beautiful, well-proportioned”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Güldeste
“hand bouquet, bunch of flowers”
Turkish, Uyghur
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Gülgün
“rose-coloured, rosy”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur, Uzbek, Azerbaijani
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gülistan
“flower garden, rose garden”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Gülizar
“flower garden, flower gardens”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Gulnar
“pomegranate flower”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Uzbek, Azerbaijani
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gülnihal
“newly opened flower; flower-faced, flower-like”
Turkish, Uyghur
Girl3 syllablesDocumented
Gülnur
“flower + light”
From Persian and Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar, Bashkir
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gülperi
“rose fairy”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Gülru
“flower of joy, of life; giver of spirit and life”
Turkish, Uyghur
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gülsüm
“chubby-cheeked, plump-faced”
Turkish, Uyghur, Azerbaijani
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gülsun
“chubby-cheeked, plump-faced”
Turkish, Uyghur
Girl2 syllablesDocumented

Gülüm
“my flower; my flower-like daughter”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish, Uyghur
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Gülzar
“rose garden, flower bed”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur, Azerbaijani
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Güzel
“beautiful, good”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur, Tatar, Bashkir
Girl2 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.