Numbers and quantity

The word yüzbaşı is a military rank today, captain, but its structure hides a number: yüz, “hundred”, and baş, “head”. At root it means “head of a hundred”. Onbaşı (corporal, “head of ten”) and Binbaşı (major, “head of a thousand”) follow the same pattern. These three surnames show how the numbers hub works: numbers in surnames usually live inside another word rather than alone.

Number words on their own

Primary members are few. Tek means “single, alone”. İkiz is a twin. Birinci, “first”, is an ordinal. Çifte means “double, twofold” and derives from çift, a word of Persian origin. These surnames name a number or quantity directly. Whether İkiz reflects an event in a family can only be known from family records.

Compounds

The real territory of this hub is compounds. Üçok joins üç, “three”, and ok, “arrow”: “three arrows”. Kırkgöz joins kırk, “forty”, and göz. Care is needed here. Göz means not only “eye” but also “arch, compartment” in Turkish. A bridge “with forty eyes” is a bridge of many arches. Which sense Kırkgöz carries is therefore uncertain. In Turkish idiom, forty is also often used simply to mean “many”.

Numbers occur in place names as well: Kırkpınar, Yedigöl. As surnames these belong primarily to the place-name hubs and link here with a secondary tag.

Misleading look-alikes

Some names look like numbers but are not. Tekin is linked to an old title, not to tek. Beşir and Beşer are Arabic names with no relation to beş, “five”. Onur, Ongun and Ünal have nothing to do with on, “ten”.

1934 and rank names

Article 3 of the Surname Law banned names of military ranks and civil offices as surnames. Article 9 of the Surname Regulation added that surnames denoting ranks or offices of the old or new state cadres could not be used. Even so, Onbaşı, Yüzbaşı and Binbaşı appear in today's population registers. Our sources offer no explanation of how this came about; here we only note that the forms are in the registers.

Why it is interesting

Number surnames gain meaning less from their own hub than from their links to others. Yüzbaşı is a rank, Kırkpınar a place, Kırkgöz perhaps a bridge. The number is an element in these surnames, but it rarely carries the meaning alone.