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

368 names · page 13 of 16

Doru
“bay horse; peak”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Doruk
“summit, peak”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dorukhan
“summit khan”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Dorukkan
“summit khan”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Dorukkurt
“summit wolf”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Dorukkut
“summit fortune”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Doruktekin
“prince of the summit”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy4 syllablesEditorial
Doruktepe
“summit hill”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy4 syllablesEditorial
Dost
“friend”
From Persian · Turkish
Boy1 syllableEditorial
Dudu
“parrot”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesLikely
Duhan
“smoke; name of a Quranic chapter”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Duhter
“girl, daughter”
From Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Dülge
“bundle, bunch”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dülger
“carpenter, builder of timber structures”
From Persian · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Duman
“festivity, merriment”
From Turkic · Turkish, Kazakh
Boy2 syllablesEditorial

Dumanbey
“lord of the mist”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Dumlu
“single-barrelled rifle”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dumrul
“hero of the Dede Korkut tales”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dündar
“vanguard”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dündaralp
“rear-guard warrior”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Dura
“stand, stay (from durmak)”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Duracan
“lasting soul”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Durak
“stop, halting place; pause in syllabic verse”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dural
“calm, unchanging”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 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.