How to pronounce and spell Turkish surnames

Turkish surnames are pronounced almost exactly as they are written. Only seven letters behave differently from English: ı, İ, ş, ç, ğ, c and y. Then there are ö and ü, which English lacks altogether. This page explains each letter with examples from our surname dataset. It also shows why the same name can look different in a passport, a residence card and a letter from an authority: Yıldırım, Yildirim, YILDIRIM.

Which letters are special?

The Turkish alphabet goes back to Law No. 1353 of 1 November 1928, which replaced the Arabic script with Latin-based "Turkish letters". Some of them are unfamiliar to English speakers:

• ı (dotless i) and İ (capital I with a dot) are two separate letters. Lower-case i pairs with capital İ; lower-case ı pairs with capital I.
• ş and ç carry a cedilla.
• ğ carries a breve and is called "yumuşak g", soft g.
• c and y look familiar but do not sound as in English (y is close, c is not).
• ö and ü are the same vowels as in German.

How is each letter pronounced?

The IPA in brackets comes from our surname pages.

• ı: a vowel made with spread lips, far back in the mouth, close to the unstressed vowel in "roses" or the "e" in "taken". Yılmaz [jɯɫˈmaz], Aydın [ajˈdɯn], Kılıç [kɯˈɫɯtʃ], Işık [ɯˈʃɯk]. Saying Yılmaz with the "i" of "machine" gives a different Turkish vowel.
• i / İ: the "ee" of "see", but short. İnce [inˈdʒe], İlhan [ilˈhan], Demir [deˈmiɾ].
• ş: English "sh". Şahin [ʃaˈhin], Şimşek [ʃimˈʃec], Güneş [ɟyˈneʃ].
• ç: English "ch" as in "church". Çelik [tʃeˈlic], Çetin [tʃeˈtin], Kılıç.
• c: English "j" as in "jam". Can, Acar, Özcan, İnce [inˈdʒe]. Turkish c never sounds like k or s.
• ğ: not a g. After a, ı, o, u it lengthens the vowel before it or links two vowels. Doğan [doˈan] sounds like "Do-an", Dağ [daː] like "Daah", Uğur [uˈuɾ] like "Oo-oor", Çağrı [tʃaːˈɾɯ]. Erdoğan is "Er-do-an".
• y: English "y" as in "yes". Yılmaz, Yıldız [jɯɫˈdɯz], Yavuz, Kaya [kaˈja].
• ö: like the vowel in French "deux" or German "schön": round your lips and say "eh". Öztürk [øzˈtyɾc], Özdemir.
• ü: like French "tu" or German "über": round your lips and say "ee". Güneş, Öztürk.
• e: short, as in "bed", never silent. Demir has two full syllables.
• h: always pronounced. Şahin has two syllables, "Sha-hin"; Mehmet is "Meh-met" with an audible h.
• r: a tapped r, pronounced in every position, also at the end: Demir, Erdoğan.

Every letter is pronounced; Turkish has no silent letters. The only partial exception is ğ, which lengthens the vowel before it instead of making its own sound.

Why does a passport say "YILDIRIM" when a letter says "Yildirim"?

A passport data page has two zones. The visual inspection zone (VIZ) is the part people read. According to ICAO Doc 9303 (Part 3, Section 3), diacritics are permitted there, and Latin-based national characters may appear without transliteration. The machine-readable zone (MRZ) at the bottom allows only the capital letters A to Z and the filler <, without diacritics (Section 4.6). For national characters, ICAO's table in Section 6.A recommends:

• Ç → C, Ş → S, Ğ → G
• İ → I, and the dotless ı → I as well
• Ö → OE or O
• Ü → UE, UXX or U

So for ö and ü ICAO allows more than one form, and each issuing state chooses. That is why the same person can appear as ÖZTÜRK in one place and as OZTURK or OEZTUERK in an MRZ. Yılmaz becomes YILMAZ, Şahin SAHIN, Doğan DOGAN, Çakır CAKIR. The MRZ is a technical transliteration for card readers, not the legal spelling of the name.

Which spelling do civil registries use?

Germany and Türkiye are both parties to CIEC Convention No. 14 on the recording of surnames and forenames in civil status registers, signed in Bern on 13 September 1973. It has been in force for both since 16 February 1977. Under Article 2, names taken from a document in the same script are reproduced literally, without alteration or translation. Diacritics are reproduced too, even if the language of the register does not use them.

For a registry that applies the convention, ş is not s and ı is not i. A name from a Turkish civil-status record is entered with its own letters.

Then why do "Yilmaz" and "Ozturk" appear so often?

Because many computer systems could not handle the characters for a long time. Germany's IT Planning Council (IT-Planungsrat) set a minimum character set for names: first DIN SPEC 91379, succeeded in August 2022 by the standard DIN 91379, whose character table includes ı, İ, ş and ğ. A report to the council dated 11 August 2022 says that IT systems used for data exchange between federal and state governments and with citizens and businesses were due to convert by November 2024 (decision 2019/53). At the time of the report, 36% of the 1,174 systems evaluated had completed the conversion. Older letters, cards and databases therefore often show simplified forms.

The most common simplifications:

• ı → i: Yilmaz, Yildiz, Yildirim, Aydin, Kilic, Isik. To a Turkish reader, "Yilmaz" with a dotted i is strictly a different vowel.
• ş → s, ç → c: Sahin, Simsek, Celik, Cetin, Cakir. English readers then tend to say "Selik" for Çelik, which moves the name further away.
• ğ → g: Dogan, Erdogan, Ugur. The g then gets pronounced, although it is silent in Turkish.
• ö/ü → o/u or oe/ue: Ozturk, Oezturk, Oeztuerk, Ozdemir, Gunes, Guenes.

What happens with capital letters?

In Turkish spelling, lower-case i becomes capital İ and lower-case ı becomes capital I. Software set to English or German turns i into a plain I instead, so Çetin in capitals becomes "CETIN" rather than "ÇETİN". The other way round, a capital İ lower-cased by a system that is not set to Turkish can turn into an i with an extra combining dot. The Unicode SpecialCasing rules therefore have separate mappings for Turkish and Azeri: I ↔ ı and İ ↔ i.

For forms, enter the name as it appears on the birth certificate or in the visual zone of the passport, and do not convert it to capitals yourself.

How do I find my name on this site?

Our search recognises simplified spellings. Typing "yildiz", "sahin" or "ozturk" finds Yıldız, Şahin and Öztürk. Every surname page shows the Turkish spelling, the syllables and the IPA, and many have an audio clip. The 30 most common surnames in Türkiye, with pronunciation, are on the "Most common Turkish surnames" page.