About Türkiye Soyadları

Türkiye Soyadları is an independent reference project on Turkish surnames. It explains what a surname means, which word it comes from and how common it is in the official registers, in Turkish, English and German.

What does the site do?

Each surname page brings together what we can verify about that name: its meaning, its root, how it is built, its spelling variants, related surnames that share a root, and notable people who carry it. If the surname appears in TÜİK’s lists, its rank and count are shown year by year.

Alongside the surname pages you will find:

• the most common surnames for each year,
• the most common surnames in each of the 81 provinces,
• pages for categories, affixes and source languages,
• a series on the 1934 Surname Law and what came after it.

Who is it for?

Anyone curious about what their surname means. People of Turkish descent in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, the UK, the US and elsewhere who want to read about their name in their own language. Family historians, journalists, and students looking into the Surname Law.

What is the editorial policy?

• Every number has a source. Each figure on the site is shown with its source and year. We publish no unsourced numbers. Estimates are always labelled as estimates.
• Two registers, kept apart. TÜİK’s ADNKS figures and the NVİ figures given to the press count different populations. We show them under separate labels and never in the same chart.
• Meanings rest on dictionaries. Explanations are based on the TDK dictionary, etymological dictionaries and the law texts, and written in our own words. Where an origin is disputed, we give the competing views. Folk etymology is never presented as fact.
• Origin is not ancestry. The linguistic origin of a word says nothing about the people who carry the name. We never attribute ethnicity, religion, sect or political views to anyone.
• No data, no section. If we cannot verify something about a surname, that section does not appear. We do not pad pages with filler.

The details are on the Methodology page.

What does the site not do?

It holds no personal records and searches none. It cannot give you access to a person’s, a family’s or a village’s civil register entry. It does not build family trees.

Nor does it claim that everyone with the same surname shares an ancestor. In 1934 many unrelated families chose the same name. A shared surname often means no more than that the same word was chosen.

For anything involving official records, go to a civil registry office (nüfus müdürlüğü) or e-Devlet. Our pages inform; they do not replace official documents.

Who runs the site?

Türkiye Soyadları is a project of the independent editorial team behind the sister site turkiyenames.com. It is not part of any institution, company or political organisation.

What is the sister site?

turkiyenames.com covers given names in Türkiye, based on TÜİK data. Both sites follow the same principles. The given-name figures behind our full-name estimates come from there, and when a surname is also a given name, the two sites link to each other.

How is the site funded?

The site is independent. It does not publish on behalf of any institution, company or political group. There are no ads at launch. Nobody can pay for content or placement on a surname page.

How can you reach us?

For questions, suggestions and corrections, our contact address is iletisim@turkiyesoyadlari.com. If you are reporting an error, include the page address and a source that supports the correction. The process is described on the Corrections page.