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

335 names · page 7 of 14

Onur
“honour, dignity”
From French · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Onurad
“name known with honour”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Onural
“win honour”
Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Onuralp
“honourable hero”
From French and Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Onurhan
“honorable khan”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Onurkan
“honour blood”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Onurlu
“honourable; of noble descent”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Onursal
“honest, upright”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesLikely
Onursan
“honour and fame”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Onursay
“honour and respect”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Onursev
“love honour”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Onurseven
“honour-loving”
Turkish
Boy4 syllablesEditorial
Onursoy
“of honorable lineage”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Onursu
“honourable soldier”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Opak
“supernatural being, like a fairy or jinn”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial

Orakay
“the month of July”
Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Oralmış
“one who has taken a fortress or city”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Oran
“ratio, proportion”
Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Oranlı
“proportionate; sensible; moderate”
Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Orbay
“army commander”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Orbek
“lord of the city”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Orcan
“army soul”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Orcaner
“army-soul man”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Örengül
“wild rose”
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.