Words from religious vocabulary

Law No. 2590, adopted on 26 November 1934, swept away a whole set of honorifics in its first article: Ağa, Hacı, Hafız, Hoca, Molla, Efendi, Bey, Beyefendi, Paşa, Hanım, Hanımefendi and Hazretleri. From then on, before the law and in official documents, citizens were to be referred to by their names alone. Here is the twist. Several of the words dropped as titles in front of a name now stand in the population registers as surnames: Hacı, Hafız, Hoca, Molla, Hacıoğlu, Hocaoğlu.

This page treats them strictly as vocabulary: what each word means and which language it comes from. It says nothing about the faith or denomination of anyone who carries these names, and nothing of the kind can be read off the word.

How they became surnames

Before 1934, titles were part of how people were named in daily life. Someone could be known as 'Hacı Mehmet' or 'Hoca Ali', and their children through that label. When surnames were chosen, such labels sometimes went into the register as they were, and more often with -oğlu. Article 6 of the Surname Regulation explicitly allows a surname together with “(oğlu)”. Article 3 of Law No. 2525, for its part, banned names of military ranks and civil offices as surnames. These were rules about word forms; we do not speculate, without documents, about how any single surname came to be accepted.

The words

Hacı comes from Arabic ḥājjī 'pilgrim' and in Turkish is the epithet of someone who has made the pilgrimage to the holy places. It ends in -cı but contains no occupational suffix. Hacıoğlu is 'the son of the hacı'.

Hoca comes from Persian khwāja 'master, lord'. Turkish uses it for both 'teacher' and 'religious scholar'; where a record reads it as 'teacher', the name moves to the scribes and scholars category.

Hafız is Arabic ḥāfiẓ 'one who guards, one who keeps by heart'; in Turkish it names a person who knows the Quran by heart.

Molla goes back to Arabic mawlā 'master'. In Ottoman usage it was a title for men of religious learning.

Derviş is from Persian darvīsh 'poor, mendicant' and describes a follower of a Sufi path.

Şeyh is Arabic shaykh 'old man, elder'; over time the sense widened to 'head of an order or a community'.

Tanrıkulu, by contrast, is Turkic throughout: tanrı 'God' + kul 'servant' + the possessive ending, 'servant of God'.

What stands out

Most roots here are Arabic or Persian, yet the words have been part of Turkish for centuries. That shows the gap between a word's origin and its place in the language: loanwords are everyday Turkish too.

One more detail. Law No. 2590 abolished these words as titles, meaning their official use in front of a name; it did not abolish the words. Also, dede in the sense of 'grandfather' belongs with the kinship words and comes here only when read as a Sufi title. Personal names such as Hasan, Ali or Mustafa are not part of this group either: they are names, and their -oğlu forms are discussed with the patronymics.