Bards, poetry and music

Ozan and aşık seem to name the same person: a folk artist who plays the saz and sings verse. The two words come from different ages, though. Ozan is the old word of the Oghuz tradition; in the Dede Korkut tales the storyteller who plays the kopuz is an ozan. Aşık comes from Arabic ʿāşıq, ‘lover, one consumed by love’, and in later centuries it became the Anatolian name for the same kind of artist. The instrument of the old bard is a surname too: Kopuz. According to TÜİK ADNKS 2025, Kopuz is the 14th most common surname in Rize, with 1,818 people.

The words

Kopuz is a Turkic instrument name. It refers to an old stringed folk instrument with a skin-covered body. Şair, ‘poet’, is Arabic šāʿir and is the general word for the written poetic tradition. Neyzen is Persian: ney, ‘reed flute’, plus -zen, ‘player’. The zurna in Zurnacı, ‘shawm player’, goes back to Persian surnā. The davul in Davulcu, ‘drummer’, is usually traced to Arabic ṭabl, ‘drum’. Kemancı is a violinist; keman comes from Persian kamān, ‘bow’, because the instrument is played with one.

One caution. Aşık has two senses: the folk minstrel and ‘lover’. Which sense a given surname carries is not always clear. This page treats the word in its minstrel sense; the ‘lover’ sense belongs with the surnames of feeling.

Patterns

The surnames here are built three ways. The artist's name: Ozan, Aşık, Şair. The instrument's name: Kopuz, Saz. And the instrument plus -cı/-ci: Davulcu, Zurnacı, Kemancı. Patronymics such as Aşıkoğlu and Ozanoğlu round out the group. Article 6 of the Surname Regulation allows a surname together with “(oğlu)”.

In 1934

The Surname Law (Law No. 2525) was published in the Resmî Gazete on 2 July 1934. It banned names of ranks and offices, tribal names, and names judged ridiculous or disgusting. Words for artists and instruments were outside those bans. Article 5 of the Regulation asked for new surnames to come from the Turkish language. Old Turkic words such as ozan and kopuz fitted that principle directly; loans like şair and zurna had long since become Turkish.

Why it is interesting

This small group shows two layers of folk literature at once: the older ozan tradition and the later aşık tradition. That Kopuz lives on as a surname shows how a word can outlast the everyday use of the thing it names. A surname does not tell us a family made music. It tells us how a word was kept.