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 3 of 28

Talibe
“seeker, desirous”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl3 syllablesEditorial
Talih
“luck, fortune”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Taliha
“luck, fortune”
From Arabic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Talip
“seeker, student”
From Arabic · Turkish, Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Taliye
“following after; secondary; one who recites the Quran”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Taluyhan
“variant of Talayhan, sea khan”
Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tamal
“take it all”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tamam
“complete, whole”
From Arabic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Tamar
“variant of Damar, vein; temperament”
Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tamay
“full moon”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tamaydın
“fully enlightened”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tamçelik
“steel through and through”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tamer
“complete man”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tamerk
“fully powerful”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tamgül
“perfect rose”
From Arabic and Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial

Tamkan
“pure blood”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tamkoç
“complete ram”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tamkurt
“complete wolf”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tamkut
“completely fortunate”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tamtürk
“complete Turk”
From Arabic and Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tan
“dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex1 syllableEditorial
Tanaçan
“opening dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tanaçar
“dawn-opener”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tanağar
“whitening dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 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.