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

620 names · page 19 of 26

Bingöl
“thousand lakes”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Bingül
“thousand roses”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Bingün
“thousand days”
From Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Binhan
“thousand khans”
From Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Binışık
“thousand lights”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Biniz
“thousand traces”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Binkan
“thousand bloods”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Binnaz
“full of charm”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Binnur
“a thousand lights”
From Turkic and Arabic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Bintuğ
“thousand banners”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Binyaşar
“may he live long”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Binzet
“beautiful, graceful”
From Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Biran
“one moment”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Birant
“one oath”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Biray
“singular as the moon”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial

Birben
“I alone”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Bircan
“one soul”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Birce
“one and only, unique”
From Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Birçek
“lock of hair, forelock, curl”
From Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Birdal
“one branch”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Birge
“together, jointly”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Birgi
“together”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Birgit
“united, joined in unity”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Birgül
“unique rose”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Girl2 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.