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 5 of 28

Tanfer
“half-light of dawn”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tangör
“see the dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tangüç
“dawn strength”
Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tangül
“dawn rose”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Girl2 syllablesEditorial
Tangülü
“dawn rose”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tangün
“dawn day”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tangüner
“dawn of the sunny day”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tanhan
“dawn khan”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanhatun
“dawn lady”
From Turkic and Persian · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tanık
“witness”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanın
“be famous”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanır
“one who recalls and knows; one who discerns”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tanırcan
“discerning soul”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tanırer
“discerning man”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tanış
“acquaintance, friend”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial

Tanju
“ancient steppe ruler's title”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tankan
“of dawn-bright lineage”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tankoç
“dawn ram”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesEditorial
Tankurt
“dawn + A wolf”
From Turkic and Proto-Turkic · Turkish
Boy2 syllablesLikely
Tankut
“blessed dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex2 syllablesEditorial
Tankutlu
“blessed dawn”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tanören
“dawn ruins”
From Turkic · Turkish
Unisex3 syllablesEditorial
Tanpınar
“dawn spring”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy3 syllablesEditorial
Tanrıkorur
“God protects”
From Turkic · Turkish
Boy4 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.