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

330 names · page 12 of 14

Nurgül
“girl like light”
From Arabic and Persian · Turkish, Uyghur, Kyrgyz, Turkmen
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Nurgün
“light of day”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Nurhan
“light + khan”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesDocumented
Nurhanım
“lady of light”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Nurhayal
“dream of light”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Nurhayat
“light of life”
Turkish, Uyghur
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Nurhilâl
“light of the crescent”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Nuri
“luminous”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Tatar
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Nurihak
“light of God”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Nurinisa
“light of women”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex4 syllablesEditorial
Nuriş
“colloquial form of Nuriye”
Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Nurışık
“light and radiance”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Nuriye
“luminous, glorious, radiant”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur
Girl2 syllablesDocumented
Nurkadın
“woman of light”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Nurkut
“radiant and fortunate”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial

Nurlu
“luminous, radiant”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Nurmah
“luminous moon”
From Arabic and Persian · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Nurmelek
“angel of light”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Nurnigâr
“luminous beloved”
From Arabic and Persian · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Nurol
“be light”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Nuröz
“radiant essence”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Nurper
“light-winged”
From Arabic and Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Nurperi
“fairy of light”
From Arabic and Persian · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Nursabah
“bright morning”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl3 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.