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.
- Published names
- 7961
- Scripts in our data
- Latin
- ISO 639-1
- tr
Browse Turkish names
7,961 names · page 28 of 332
- “pure white khan”From Turkic · TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “very bright”From Turkic · TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “mediator”From Turkic · TurkishUnisex3 syllablesEditorial
- “Mount Arafat, a hill near Mecca”From Arabic · TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “island”From Turkic · TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “plain, lowland; mild”From Turkic · TurkishUnisex2 syllablesEditorial
- “the Aras river”From Greek · TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “courage; the people”From Turkic · TurkishUnisex2 syllablesEditorial
- “blond, blue-eyed person”From Turkic · TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “honourable lord”From Turkic · TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “honourable lord”From Turkic · Turkish, KazakhBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “juniper”From Turkic · TurkishUnisex2 syllablesEditorial
- “pure-hearted person”From Turkic · TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “the Arda river”From unknown · Turkish, KazakhBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “Ardahan, a city in northeastern Turkey”From Turkic · TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “pure iron”From Turkic · TurkishBoy3 syllablesEditorial
- “juniper”TurkishBoy2 syllablesDocumented
- “successor”From Turkic · TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “the day before a religious festival”From Arabic · TurkishUnisex3 syllablesEditorial
- “clean, honest person”From Turkic · TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “pure, upright person”From Turkic · TurkishUnisex2 syllablesEditorial
- “intelligent, clever”From Turkic · TurkishUnisex3 syllablesEditorial
- “weary, exhausted, weak”From Turkic · TurkishBoy2 syllablesEditorial
- “ravine between mountains”From Turkic · TurkishBoy2 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):
- Turkic4158
- Arabic2170
- Persian1209
- Greek42
- Mongolic39
- Hebrew28
- French14
Counted from 7961 published entries. Each name page explains its own etymology with sources.
Turkish names by meaning
Explore related languages
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.

