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

492 names · page 15 of 21

Kocabaş
“great chief”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Kocabey
“great lord”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Koca-demir
“mighty iron”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy4 syllablesEditorial
Kocagöz
“great eye”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Koçak
“brave, generous”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Koçakalp
“generous, brave hero”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Koçakaslan
“brave lion”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy4 syllablesEditorial
Koçaker
“generous, valiant man”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Kocaman
“huge, very big”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Koçaş
“guide; rain cloud”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Kocataş
“great stone”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Kocatay
“great colt”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Kocatürk
“great Turk”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Kocaün
“great renown”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Koçay
“strong as a ram”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial

Koçboğa
“ram and bull”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Koçbörü
“ram wolf”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Koçer
“healthy, courageous man”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Köçeri
“child born during a migration”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Koçhan
“ram khan”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Koçkan
“of brave lineage”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Koçkar
“fighting ram; wild sheep”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Koçsoy
“lineage of rams”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Koçtuğ
“ram standard”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 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.