-gül

Akgül means ‘white rose’, Sarıgül ‘yellow rose’, Karagül ‘dark rose’. In all three the last element is the same flower. Dictionaries give gül as a Persian word that became one of the basic words of Turkish through Ottoman Turkish. It names the rose plant and its flower, and more broadly stands for beauty. This page deals with the surnames in which the word closes a compound.

Although the word is Persian, these surnames follow the Turkish compound pattern. The qualifying element comes first, the head second. The 1934 rules are useful context. Article 5 of the Surname Regulation states: “Yeni takılan soyadları Türk dilinden alınır”, ‘new surnames are taken from the Turkish language’. By then gül had long been part of everyday Turkish, and surnames built with it are well represented in the registers.

Because -gül is an independent word, it does not change under vowel harmony. Even after a back-vowel element the form stays the same: Algül, Karagül, Sarıgül. The two parts are written together, with no linking sound.

The first elements mostly name a colour or a quality. Akgül is a white rose and Algül a red one; al means ‘red, crimson’. Sarıgül is a yellow rose, Karagül a dark one. In Şengül, şen means ‘cheerful’, so the name reads as ‘cheerful rose’. In Aygül, ay carries the sense ‘radiant, lovely’ that it often has in names.

Many of these are also women’s given names. Akgül, Aygül and Şengül are used both as given names and as surnames. As surnames their meaning is the same. Whether a particular surname came from a given name or straight from the words cannot be said in general.

The main false division is Özgül. It is a separate dictionary word meaning ‘specific, peculiar to something’. It is not read as öz + gül. Names such as Güler, Gülen or Gülsoy do not belong here either. Güler and Gülen are verb forms, and in Gülsoy the rose comes first.