-arslan / -aslan

Turkish has two living forms of the word for lion: the older arslan and the modern aslan. Old Turkic texts write it arslan. In speech the r was lost over time, and aslan became standard. Both forms appear in surnames. Arslan and Aslan are two spellings of one word, with no difference in meaning.

Both spellings are frequent. According to TÜİK ADNKS 2025, Arslan ranks 11th with 521,149 people and Aslan 14th with 409,459. This page gathers the names in which the word closes a compound.

-arslan is not a suffix but a full word. It does not change with vowel harmony and stays the same whatever comes before it. Only the spelling varies. The same name can be registered in two forms: Alparslan and Alpaslan, Kılıçarslan and Kılıçaslan. When the first element ends in a vowel, two vowels are written side by side: Karaaslan, Kocaaslan.

The head of the compound is the lion, and the first element describes it. Alparslan joins alp ‘hero’ and arslan: ‘hero lion’. In Kılıçarslan, kılıç is a sword, so the name reads as ‘sword lion’, a lion as sharp as a blade. Karaaslan means ‘black lion’; kara here signals strength as much as colour. Akaslan is ‘white lion’, Gökarslan ‘sky lion’ or ‘blue lion’. In Kocaaslan, koca means ‘big; old’.

Alparslan and Kılıçarslan are also names known from history. Alparslan was the name of a Seljuk sultan, and Kılıçarslan the name of several Anatolian Seljuk rulers. A surname that matches these names shares their words, nothing more. It does not mean that the people who carry it are connected to those rulers.

The word does not only name the animal. Dictionaries also give a figurative sense: ‘a strong, brave person’. In surnames the lion usually carries this sense; the name praises a quality more than it describes a beast.

The risk of confusion is low. Two points still need care. Alpaslan divides as alp + aslan, not al + paslan. Names such as Arslanoğlu end in -oğlu and therefore sit with the patronymic surnames.