Kızıl-

Read the surname Kızılkaya and you first picture a rock, then its colour. In Turkish compounds the weight falls on the last element. Kızılkaya is a kind of kaya ‘rock’, and kızıl describes it. This page covers that colour word when it stands at the start of a surname.

Kızıl is an adjective meaning ‘red, crimson’, listed in the TDK dictionary. It has been in use since Old Turkic. The everyday word kırmızı is a loan from Arabic. Surnames favour the older native word, kızıl, by a wide margin.

Kızıl- is a full word, not a suffix. It therefore never changes under vowel harmony; it keeps the form kızıl in every surname. The second element keeps its own vowels too. In Kızıltepe a back-vowel adjective is followed by front-vowel tepe ‘hill’, which is normal in a compound. The two words are written as one.

The typical partners are landscape words. Kızılkaya is ‘red rock’, Kızıltaş ‘red stone’, Kızıldağ ‘red mountain’ and Kızıltepe ‘red hill’. Kızılay joins kızıl and ay ‘moon’ and means ‘red moon’. In these names the colour paints a scene. It calls up something concrete, like the shade of earth or iron.

Place names are the main trap. Kızılırmak is the name of a river. Kızıltepe is also a district in Mardin province. When a surname refers to a place, it should be read as a proper name, not as a fresh compound. Only the record for that surname can show which reading applies. The spelling alone cannot settle it.

Kızılcık is a different case. Historically it is kızıl plus the diminutive suffix -cık. Today, though, it is a word in its own right: the cornelian cherry, both the tree and its fruit. As a surname it is read as that plant name and is not split into ‘red’ plus a suffix.

Surnames with Kızıl- belong to the colour family alongside Ak-, Kara-, Boz- and Sarı-. They follow the same pattern. Yet the meaning of each compound comes from its final element. Kızıldağ names a mountain, Kızıltaş a stone, Kızılay a heavenly body. The colour only adds a quality to that noun.