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.
- Published names
- 7961
- Scripts in our data
- Latin
- ISO 639-1
- tr
Browse Turkish names
330 names · page 14 of 14
- “single grain of light”From Arabic and Turkic · TurkishGirl3 syllablesEditorial
- “unique light”From Arabic and Turkic · TurkishGirl2 syllablesEditorial
- “prince of light”From Arabic and Turkic · TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “radiant-skinned”From Arabic and Persian · TurkishGirl2 syllablesEditorial
- “ball of light”From Arabic and Turkic · TurkishUnisex2 syllablesEditorial
- “light of God”From Arabic · TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “give light”From Arabic and Turkic · TurkishUnisex2 syllablesEditorial
- “light-giving”From Arabic and Turkic · TurkishGirl3 syllablesEditorial
- “luminous woman”From Arabic and Persian · TurkishUnisex2 syllablesEditorial
- “golden light”From Arabic and Persian · TurkishGirl2 syllablesEditorial
- “water of immortality”From Persian · TurkishUnisex3 syllablesEditorial
- “sweet, pleasant”From Persian · TurkishGirl2 syllablesEditorial
- “help, support; victory”From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, AzerbaijaniBoy2 syllablesDocumented
- “help of the faith”From Arabic · TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “good news”From Persian · TurkishGirl3 syllablesEditorial
- “good news”From Persian · TurkishUnisex2 syllablesEditorial
- “commander, lord”From Mongolic · TurkishUnisex1 syllableEditorial
- “pleasure, delight”From Arabic · TurkishUnisex2 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):
- Turkic4158
- Arabic2170
- Persian1209
- Greek42
- Mongolic39
- Hebrew28
- French14
Counted from 7961 published entries. Each name page explains its own etymology with sources.
Turkish names by meaning
Explore related languages
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.

