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 7 of 16

Dikboğa
“upright bull”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Dikçam
“upright pine”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dikdal
“upright branch”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dikeç
“vertical; a pointed iron tool for making planting holes”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dikel
“upright hand; a spade or hoe”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Diken
“thorn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Diker
“upright man”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dikey
“vertical”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dikmen
“conical peak; highest point of a mountain; plateau”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Diksoy
“upright lineage”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Diktaş
“upright stone”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Dil
“heart”
From Persian · Turkish
Boy1 syllableEditorial
Dila
“O heart”
From Persian · Turkish, Kazakh
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Dilan
“folk dance”
From Kurdish · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Dilara
“one who captivates, adorns and embellishes the heart”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh
Girl3 syllablesDocumented

Dilâşup
“heart-stirring beauty”
From Persian · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Dilavər
“brave, courageous”
From Persian · Turkish, Azerbaijani
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Dilay
“bright-hearted, pure-hearted”
From Persian and Turkic · Turkish, Uyghur
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Dilbaz
“charming, heart-delighting”
From Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Dilbent
“heart-binding, one who captures hearts”
From Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Dilber
“one who draws the heart”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur, Azerbaijani, Turkmen
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Dilbeste
“heart-bound, in love”
From Persian · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Dilbu
“fragrance of the heart”
From Persian · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Dildar
“one who gladdens and seeks the heart; brave, courageous”
From Persian · Turkish, Uyghur
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.