-ay

İlkay is made of two familiar words, ilk ‘first’ and ay ‘moon’. ‘First moon’ means the new crescent reappearing in the sky. This page covers surnames in which ay stands at the end of such a compound.

Ay is among the oldest words in Turkish. It means both ‘the moon’ and ‘month’. As a name element it usually adds ‘beautiful, radiant, bright’. Being the final element, it is the head of the compound; the first element describes the moon or pairs another idea with it.

As a full word, ay does not change under vowel harmony. It stays -ay after the back vowels of Alpay and the front vowels of Günay. Writing joins the two parts without a hyphen.

Most of the examples are also well-known given names. Alpay joins alp ‘hero’ and reads as ‘heroic moon’. In Tuncay the first element is tunç ‘bronze’; in writing, its final ç becomes c before the vowel. Günay places gün ‘day, sun’ beside ay: ‘sun and moon’. Eray has er ‘brave man’, and Kutay kut ‘good fortune, blessing’. Akay is ‘white, bright moon’, Özay ‘true moon’. When these names occur as surnames they may well come from a given name, though the records do not always show it.

Kızılay needs a separate note. It is built from kızıl ‘red’ and ay, and means ‘red crescent’. The same word is also known as the name of a relief organisation. A surname page explains only the meaning of the word.

Not every name ending in -ay contains this element. Olay ‘event’ and Kolay ‘easy’ are dictionary words. Atalay is either read as ata + al + ay or taken whole as a given name; it is not split automatically.

The same word can also open a name. Aydemir, Aydoğan and Ayhan are covered on the page for the prefix Ay-.