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 16 of 21

Koçtürk
“ram Turk”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Koçu
“bridal carriage; hollow, ditch”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Koçubey
“driver of the bridal carriage”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Koçyiğit
“brave lad”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Kökel
“sky realm”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Köken
“origin, source; ancestry”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Köker
“of old, rooted lineage”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Köklü
“of good family; well-established”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Köksal
“of heavenly or deep-rooted origin”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Köksan
“famous name”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Kökşin
“sky-blue; elderly”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Köksoy
“renowned lineage”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Köksu
“blue water”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Köktan
“blue dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Köktaş
“sky stone”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial

Köktay
“sky colt”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Kökten
“deep-rooted; noble”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Köktürk
“the Göktürks, an early Turkic state”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Kolçak
“brave, bold; arm guard”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Koldan
“in accordance with the rule, normal”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Koldas
“partner; companion”
From Turkic · Turkish, Kazakh
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Koman
“hope; a three-year-old unbred mare”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Kömen
“illusion, fantasy”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Komutan
“commander”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 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.