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 18 of 21

Koraltan
“golden ember”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Koramaz
“proud, hard to please”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Koraslan
“ember lion”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Koray
“ember + moon”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Korçak
“statue”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Korçan
“waterfall”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Korday
“swan”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Korel
“fiery land”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Korer
“fiery brave man”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Korgan
“fortress”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Korgün
“fiery day”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Korhan
“ember khan”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Korkan
“fiery, dynamic person”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Körklü
“beautiful, imposing”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Korkmaz
“fearless”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial

Korkut
“ember + Mandate of Heaven”
From Proto-Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesLikely
Korkutalp
“hero Korkut”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Korkutata
“Korkut Ata, the legendary Oghuz sage-bard”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy4 syllablesEditorial
Korman
“fiery, energetic person”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Köroğlu
“hero of a Turkish folk epic”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Körpe
“young, fresh, tender”
From Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Kortak
“handsome, imposing, well-built”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Kortan
“sheer cliff; pelican”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Kortaş
“ember stone”
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.