Boz-

Four letters, two different words. Boz is a colour adjective, while boz- is the stem of the verb bozmak ‘to spoil, to break’. Telling them apart is the first step in reading these surnames.

As a colour, boz is the TDK term for ash grey or a pale, earthy brown. It is also used for the coat of a horse. It is not a clean grey but a dull, dusty shade between grey and brown. English dun comes close.

In surnames boz is the first element of a compound. As a one-syllable word it never changes. Vowel harmony does not touch it, and the second element keeps its own vowels. The core meaning lies at the end. Bozdağ is a mountain, Bozkaya a rock, Boztepe a hill; boz adds the colour.

Most partners are landscape or animal words. Bozkurt means ‘grey wolf’. Bozdağ is ‘grey mountain’, Bozkaya ‘grey rock’ and Boztepe ‘grey hill’. In Bozyiğit the colour attaches to a person, yiğit ‘brave young man’. Bozbey is analysed as boz + bey ‘lord’. Bozoğlu means ‘son of Boz’, where Boz is best taken as a nickname or a name. Such a nickname may describe an appearance. It would be wrong to conclude that the family looked that way.

False divisions are the real issue on this page. Bozan and Bozuk have nothing to do with the colour. They belong to the verb bozmak. Bozan is a participle formed from it. Bozuk is an adjective meaning ‘broken, out of order’. Neither should be split into the colour word plus a suffix.

Bozkır is not split either. Historically it combines boz and kır ‘open country’. Today it is a single dictionary entry meaning ‘steppe’, and as a surname it carries that meaning.

Bozok is another matter. It appears in history as the name of a branch of the Oghuz and of a region. As a surname it simply repeats that historical name. It says nothing about any link between its bearers and that branch.

So a surname beginning with boz raises one question first: colour, verb, or a word the dictionary already lists?