Oghuz and historical Turkic tribe names

Mahmud al-Kashgari's Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk is one of the earliest large dictionaries of Turkish known to us. In it he lists the Oghuz tribes and draws each tribe's brand mark, its damga. Kayı, Bayat, Avşar, Kınık, Salur, Bayındır and Çepni are among the names on that list. A later history by Rashid al-Din gives a similar list. Centuries afterwards, some of these names entered the civil registers as surnames.

The 1934 rules on tribal names

Article 3 of Law No. 2525 says names of tribes (aşiret) may not be used as surnames. Md. 8 of the Surname Regulation adds that surnames implying membership of a tribe or clan may neither be used nor newly given. These rules governed word forms. The names on this page appear in today's registers all the same. We do not try to explain how each one was recorded; without documents, any account would be a guess.

Tribal names as words

This page is not a genealogy. A surname like Kayı or Bayat does not show that the bearer descends from that tribe. A tribal name is treated here only as a historical word: how the sources record it and, where known, what it means.

• Kayı: the name of one of the Oghuz tribes, found in al-Kashgari's list. Several meanings have been proposed; none is certain.
• Bayat: an Oghuz tribal name whose meaning is debated. Everyday Turkish bayat 'stale' is a separate word.
• Avşar / Afşar: two spellings of the same tribal name. Both occur in the surname registers and are linked on this site.
• Kınık: the name of an Oghuz tribe, which also survives in some modern place names.
• Salur: an Oghuz tribal name, also remembered in epic tradition.
• Bayındır: an Oghuz tribal name and today a place name as well. Modern Turkish bayındır is an adjective, 'developed, well kept'; how it relates to the tribal name is a separate question.
• Çepni: an Oghuz tribal name. Dictionaries have not settled its meaning.
• Kıpçak: not Oghuz, but the historical name of a large Turkic confederation of the Eurasian steppe.

Shape and meaning

Most of these names are bare words without a suffix. Some, such as Kınık, Bayındır and Iğdır, are also modern place names, so forms with -lı (Bayındırlı, for instance) are filed first under place-based surnames, with the tribal name as a secondary tag.

Another point: the meaning of a tribal name is often unknown. Medieval sources recorded the names but did not always explain them, so later explanations should be read with care. Popular origin stories are not dictionary facts either.

What is interesting

Tribal names belong to the oldest written layer of Turkish vocabulary. A name drawn beside its brand mark in a medieval dictionary can now sit on an identity card as a surname. That continuity is a fact about language. It is not a claim about anyone's lineage.