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 4 of 28

Tanak
“white dawn; strange, surprising”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanal
“dawn red”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tanalp
“hero of dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanaltan
“golden dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tanaltay
“dawn Altai”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tanay
“dawn moon”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanaydın
“bright dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tanbay
“dawn lord”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanbek
“dawn chief”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanberk
“firm dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tanbey
“lord bright as dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanboğa
“dawn bull”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tanbolat
“dawn-colored steel”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tancan
“dawn soul”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tandan
“born at dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial

Tandoğan
“rising dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tandoğdu
“dawn broke”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tandoğmuş
“risen dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tandoruk
“dawn summit”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tanegül
“grain of rose”
From Persian · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tanel
“dawn land”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanelgin
“dawn envoy”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Taner
“man of the dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanerk
“dawn power”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 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.