How to research a Turkish surname and family history

Where should you start a family history search in Türkiye?

Start with your own record and work backwards. The easiest tool is the e-Devlet service “Alt-Üst Soy Bilgisi Sorgulama” (ancestry and descendancy query). According to the General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs (NVİ), these records rest on the population registers created by the 1904 general census and can reach back to people born in the 1800s.

A practical order:

1. Look at what the surname means and how it is built. That explains how the name was formed, but it does not on its own show where a family comes from.
2. Get your ancestry document from e-Devlet.
3. For what the document does not show, apply to the registry office and the NVİ archive.
4. To go back before 1904, look at the Ottoman population registers through the State Archives.
5. Talk to older relatives. Nicknames, village names and migration stories tell you what to look for in the archives.

This site offers no person lookup. The official routes below are also open only for your own record and for the relatives the law allows.

What can a surname’s meaning and structure tell you?

The Surname Regulation required surnames newly given after 1934 to be taken from the Turkish language. Knowing the word behind a surname, and the suffix it carries, helps you understand why it might have been chosen.

But the origin of a word is not the origin of the family that carries it. For meanings, see the site’s surnames and their meanings list and each surname’s own page. The methodology page explains how this information is put together.

What does the e-Devlet ancestry query show?

According to NVİ, the records in the population registers created by the 1904 general census were transferred to electronic form under the MERNİS project. That is why the service can show the records of people born as far back as the 1800s, together with family members and their relationships, without a visit to a registry office.

You reach the document on e-Devlet after verifying your identity, under “Nüfus ve Vatandaşlık İşleri Genel Müdürlüğü / Alt-Üst Soy Bilgisi Sorgulama”. According to NVİ it lists, as a report:

• the person,
• their ascendants (mother, father, grandparents and so on),
• their descendants (children, grandchildren and so on),
• their siblings.

According to 2018 news reports, each row shows the degree of kinship, first name and surname, father’s and mother’s names, place and date of birth, the province, district and neighbourhood or village of registration, the volume, household and individual numbers, and marital status.

The legal basis is Article 44 of the Population Services Law. People may query the register extracts of themselves and of their descendants and ascendants through e-Devlet, and these documents have the same legal value as ones issued by a registry office.

According to figures NVİ published in 2022, the service has run since 2018 and by then had produced 108,317,319 ancestry documents. The “Soy Ağacı Görüntüleme” (family tree view) added in 2021 had been used to draw 5,607,340 trees. The tree view shows the same data as a simple chart.

What does the document leave out?

It is built on the direct line. According to the NVİ archive, applications may concern the record holder, their spouse and their descendants or ascendants; information on collateral relatives such as uncles, aunts and their children cannot be requested.

Surnames, moreover, became compulsory only with the 1934 Surname Law, which required them to be entered in the population registers. So the surname shown in the document may not be a name that an older generation used before 1934.

What is held at registry offices and in the NVİ archive?

NVİ’s archive page lists these holdings:

• the Atik Nüfus Kütükleri (old population registers) of 1883 (1299 in the Ottoman calendar),
• Sicil Vukuat Defterleri (registers of civil events),
• the family registers of the 1904 (1320) general census,
• local census books and their working copies from 1925–1926 onwards,
• event books kept from 1904 to 1974 (births, marriages, divorces, moves, corrections, re-registrations and deaths),
• the supporting documents kept since 1904.

Applications can be made in person, by post or through CİMER, the presidency’s online communication centre. They must include your name, address and signature; if you ask about someone else’s record, you must state your relationship and both ID numbers. The archive answers citizens in writing but does not send documents; records leave the archive only at the request of a competent registry office or a court. Ancestry records that cannot be queried on e-Devlet can be requested from any district registry office.

How were surnames registered in 1934–1936?

Article 1 of the Surname Law required every Turk to carry a surname in addition to a given name. Under the 1934 text of the Surname Regulation, everyone without a surname had to choose one and have it entered in the register by 2 July 1936. For those who had not chosen by then, the governor, the district governor or an official they appointed chose the name.

This matters when you test family stories about why a name was chosen. We describe how the books were kept, and the role of village heads and municipal officials, in a separate article: how surnames were chosen and registered in 1935–1936. For the rules themselves: the Surname Regulation of 1934.

What is in the Ottoman population registers?

To go back before 1904, the source is the Ottoman population registers (nüfus defterleri). The first census in the modern sense in the Ottoman state was held in 1831, under Mahmud II. The registers it produced are kept in the Ottoman Archive under the code “NFS.d” (Nüfus Defterleri).

They do not look like today’s registers. According to a study of the 1836 register of Ahlat:

• From 1830–1831 onwards only the male population was recorded.
• The register was organised by neighbourhood and village, and within them by household.
• Each male was entered with his name, any epithet or nickname, his age and his relationship to the head of household.
• Father and son were linked by the father’s name, as in “Ahmed bin Ali” (Ahmed son of Ali); there were no surnames.
• Physical features such as height, and occupations and duties, were also noted.

Women and girls do not appear in these registers. To trace a family in them you need the village or neighbourhood name, the names of great-grandfathers and, ideally, their nicknames.

How do you research in the State Archives?

The Ottoman Archive and the Republican Archive belong to the Presidency of State Archives (Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı). According to its own pages:

• The catalogue of the document search system (BETSİS) can be searched online at katalog.devletarsivleri.gov.tr. Membership is free.
• Reading rooms are in Ankara and at the Ottoman Archive complex in Kağıthane, İstanbul, open weekdays 9:00–18:00. Membership can be applied for in the reading room or through e-Devlet.
• According to the fee shown on the site on 9 November 2026, a document image costs 0.50 TL, in the reading room or online.
• Documents are opened for research once they are catalogued and 30 years have passed since the last transaction; for personnel and personal files the period is 101 years.
• Someone you authorise can research and request documents on your behalf.

One important note: asked about family trees, the Presidency answers that “information and documents on lineage research are not held in our archive” and refers people to NVİ or their registry office. In other words, the official backbone of a family tree is the population register; the Ottoman registers are additional sources used in historical research.

For families who migrated there is one more route: settlement (iskân) records. According to the Presidency, they can be found if you state where the family came from, in which year, under which head of family, the names of those who came with them and where in Türkiye they were settled.

What can a surname tell you, and what can it not?

A surname is the name a family chose, or was given, in 1934–1936. Two people sharing a surname are therefore not necessarily related.

The 1934 text of the regulation shows this clearly. Families of the same lineage could choose a common surname, but unrelated people could not take the same surname in the same village, town or city; the name went to whoever applied first. That ban applied only within one place. Unrelated families in different places could choose the same name, and many did.

The clearest example is Yılmaz: according to TÜİK ADNKS 2025, 1,177,896 people in Türkiye carry it. They plainly do not all descend from one family. Conversely, different surnames do not prove that families are unrelated: related families were not obliged to choose a common name, and surnames can later be changed by court order.

Nor does a surname built from a word in a given language show that the family came from a community speaking that language. To see where a surname is common today, use the province maps on the surname pages and the province pages; but they show today’s distribution, not where a family comes from.

What about privacy?

Population records are personal data, and the law limits access. Under Article 44 of the Population Services Law:

• a register extract can be obtained by the record holder, their spouse, parent or guardian, descendants and ascendants, or someone holding their power of attorney;
• other third parties cannot obtain any extract or information on a person’s register except their marital status;
• a residential address is released only with the person’s consent.

Your ancestry document also contains the names, dates of birth and register details of living relatives. If you post the document or a family tree printout online, you expose their data as well as your own. Removing living people’s details before sharing is a good habit.

Can you research from abroad?

Some of the official routes are open to people abroad. e-Devlet services are delivered online; identity is verified with an e-Devlet password, mobile signature, electronic signature, Turkish ID card or internet banking. The Population Services Law also lists consulates among the authorities that can obtain register extracts directly. At the State Archives, someone you authorise can research for you.

What can you use on this site?

• Each surname page: meaning, structure, how many people carry it according to TÜİK, and the province distribution. Example: Yılmaz.
• The surnames and their meanings list.
• The history and current rules of the Surname Law.
• The methodology page, which explains where the numbers and notes come from.

The information on this page was checked on 9 November 2026 against the current pages of NVİ, the Presidency of State Archives and the official legislation database.