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

663 names · page 15 of 28

Tenvir
“illumination”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Teoman
“Xiongnu ruler, father of Mete”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tepedelen
“castle built on steep rocks”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy4 syllablesEditorial
Tepegöz
“cyclops; clumsy or troublesome person”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tepel
“top part of something; small hill”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tepir
“sieve for cleaning grain; treetop”
From Persian · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tercan
“young, fresh; red wheat”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Terek
“shelf; terraced mountain; tree”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Terem
“kid born of a hair goat and an Angora goat”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Terim
“term, technical word”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Terken
“khagan, king, ruler”
Turkish, Uyghur
2 syllablesDocumented
Terlan
“eagle-like bird of prey”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Teşrif
“honoring, bestowing honor”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Teşrife
“honoring, bestowing honor”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tetiker
“alert, nimble man”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial

Tevekkül
“reliance, trust”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tevfik
“success granted by God”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tevfika
“success granted by God”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Tevhiddin
“unity of the faith”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tevhide
“unity of God”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Tevhit
“unification”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tevil
“interpretation”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tevir
“kind, sort; color”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tevrat
“the Torah”
From Hebrew · Turkish
Girl2 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.