-gün

Özgün, Düzgün, Üzgün: all three end in -gün, yet none of them contains the word for ‘day’. That distinction is the key to this page. Turkish has gün as an independent word. It also has a derivational suffix with the forms -gın, -gin, -gun, -gün. The suffix changes with vowel harmony; the word does not.

Words built with the suffix are separate dictionary entries. Üzgün ‘sad’, sürgün ‘exile’ and solgun ‘pale’ come from verb stems: üz-, sür- and sol- take the suffix. Düzgün ‘orderly, well-formed’ and özgün ‘original’ are dictionary words in their own right. Even where these occur as surnames, they are not compounds and do not belong here.

The gün of the compounds is an old Turkic word. Its basic meaning is ‘day, a period of twenty-four hours’ or ‘daytime’. The dictionary also gives the same word the sense ‘sun’: gün doğmak means ‘the sun rises’. Both senses can be heard in surnames; the name evokes a bright day as well as the sun.

Since the word does not change with vowel harmony, it stays the same after any element: Akgün, Aygün, Ergün, Şengün. The head is gün, and the first element qualifies it. Akgün is ‘white day’, that is, a bright, lucky day. Aygün sets two heavenly bodies side by side, moon and sun. Şengün means ‘cheerful day’.

Ergün is both a boy’s name and a surname. It combines er ‘man, valiant’ and gün. Whether a given surname came from the personal name or was formed from the words cannot be known in general. In Bilgün the first element has no clear analysis. The last element is certainly gün, but no single explanation is offered without a source.

There is a simple test. Remove the final part: if a meaningful element is left (ak, ay, er, şen), the name is most likely a gün compound. If what remains is a verb stem or a fragment (üz-, sür-, sol-), the ending is the suffix.