-dağ

A colour, a size or a quality, then dağ ‘mountain’: Karadağ, Bozdağ, Akdağ, Yücedağ. In these surnames the subject is always a mountain. The first element only says what kind of mountain it is.

Dağ is a full word and does not change under vowel harmony. Even after an element with front vowels the form stays the same: Demirdağ, Yücedağ. The final ğ lengthens the preceding vowel in speech, so the word sounds like ‘daa’. When the surname takes an ending, the spelling is kept: Karadağ’ın, Bozdağ’dan.

Structurally these are adjective-plus-noun compounds with the head at the end. Karadağ is ‘black mountain’, Bozdağ ‘grey, ash-coloured mountain’, Akdağ ‘white mountain’. Kızıldağ means ‘red mountain’. Kara can convey strength and grandeur as well as colour. Yücedağ reads as ‘lofty, high mountain’, Kocadağ as ‘big mountain’, Gökdağ as ‘sky-blue mountain’. Demirdağ joins two images of firmness: ‘mountain like iron’. On the site the category follows the head, so these names join the mountain, rock and stone surnames.

Some of these compounds are also the names of real mountains, and that is where most care is needed. Uludağ is the name of the mountain near Bursa. If a record explains the surname by that mountain, it goes to the place-name surnames. Karadağ is more tangled still. It analyses as ‘black mountain’, it names many mountains, and in Turkish it is also the name of a Balkan country, Montenegro. Only a source can decide which reading applies. That a surname matches the name of a mountain does not show any link between its bearers and that mountain.

Adding -lı gives the form -dağlı. On its own, Dağlı is a word meaning ‘mountain dweller, highlander’. In forms such as Karadağlı or Bozdağlı, however, -lı may be attached to a mountain’s name. These forms are read together with the rules on the -lı page.

The 1934 rules have no special bearing on this element. Dağ is one of the basic words of everyday Turkish, which is why it turns up often in surnames, both alone and in compounds.

In sum, a surname in -dağ raises two questions. How does the first element describe the mountain? And is the whole form also the proper name of a mountain? If the answer to the second is yes, the record says so and cites its source.