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 2 of 28

Tahirə
“pure, chaste”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Azerbaijani
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Tahsin
“praise, approval”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tahsine
“praise, approval”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Taibe
“repentant”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Taip
“repentant”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy1 syllableEditorial
Takdir
“appreciation; fate”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Taki
“devout, avoiding wrongdoing”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Takiye
“devout, avoiding wrongdoing”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Takiyettin
“piety of the faith”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Takiyüddin
“variant of Takiyettin, piety of the faith”
Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Talas
“blown dust; storm; trouble; corner; an Oghuz tribe”
From Turkic · Turkish, Kyrgyz
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Talat
“countenance, appearance; beauty”
From Arabic · Turkish, Kazakh, Uzbek, Bashkir
Boy2 syllablesDocumented
Talay
“sea, ocean”
From Old Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Talayer
“sea man, seafarer”
From Mongolic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Talayhan
“sea khan”
From Mongolic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial

Talaykan
“sea lineage”
From Mongolic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Talaykoç
“sea ram”
From Mongolic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Talaykurt
“sea wolf”
From Mongolic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Talaykut
“sea blessing”
From Mongolic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Talayman
“sailor”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Talaz
“hurricane, storm”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Talha
“acacia tree”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tali
“Of secondary degree, ancillary.”
From Arabic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesLikely
Talia
“luck, fortune”
From Arabic · 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.