Unusual Turkish surnames: names beyond the official lists

What does “rare surname” mean, and why is there no exact count?

To call a surname rare you need to know two things: how many people carry it, and how many carry every other surname. For Türkiye, neither is published in full.

TÜİK publishes two kinds of list based on the Address-Based Population Registration System (ADNKS): the 30 most common surnames in Türkiye as a whole, and the 30 most common in each of the 81 provinces. Every number on this site comes from those lists (TÜİK ADNKS 2025). There is no official count for surnames outside them. Nor is there a published official figure for how many different surnames exist in Türkiye.

So treat the “rarest Turkish surnames” lists that circulate online with caution. A claim of “rarest” without a source cannot be checked. This guide makes no such claim. Instead, from among surnames that never appear in the official lists, we pick those whose word or structure is of interest and explain what they mean. The selection measures interest, not rarity.

What does absence from the official lists mean, and what does it not mean?

Being absent from the lists does not prove that a surname is rare. Take an example. In 2025 the surname in 30th place in İstanbul, Güneş, has 39,584 bearers. So even a surname carried by tens of thousands of people in İstanbul may miss the İstanbul list. In Tunceli, by contrast, Yeşil in 30th place has 284 bearers.

These thresholds also allow an upper bound. Aktaş, 30th in the national list, has 222,711 bearers; any surname not in the national list has fewer. A surname that appears in none of the 81 provincial lists can have at most the 30th-place count in each province; those thresholds add up to 244,664. In short, falling outside the lists can mean “thousands of people” or “a few families”. The data available cannot tell the two apart.

What the lists do show is when a surname stands out in a province. The 2025 provincial lists contain 266 different surnames, and 131 of them appear in a single province’s list only. That shows the difference between “uncommon” and “local”: a surname absent from the national list can rank near the top in one province. For province-by-province detail, see surnames by province.

Our selection criterion for this guide is this: the surname is published on this site, appears in none of TÜİK’s lists for 2018–2025, national or provincial, and its word or structure is remarkable. The box at the bottom of the page shows a random selection of surnames that meet the same criterion.

Which surnames come from Old Turkic words?

Some surnames preserve old words that modern Turkish no longer uses, or uses in a changed form:

• Edgü: Old Turkic ‘good’. Nişanyan Adlar explains how the word developed via edgü > eygü > eyü > eyi into today’s iyi.
• Çayan: Old Turkic ‘scorpion’. Nişanyan Adlar notes that in old Turkic names it may have referred to the sign of Scorpio.
• Yula: Old Turkic ‘lamp, lantern’. Nişanyan Adlar rejects the popular explanation that it means ‘dream spirit’.
• Uluğ: the old form of today’s ulu: ‘great, exalted’. Its best-known bearer is Ulugh Beg, who built an observatory in Samarkand.
• Uluç: according to Nişanyan Adlar an old name meaning ‘little son’, and a title given to Turkmen lords in the Seljuk period.
• Kart: ‘old, seasoned’; Old Turkic kart meant ‘old person’. It is unrelated to kart ‘card’, from French.
• Akşit: from xšīd ‘ruler’, the title of the Sogdian rulers of Samarkand and Fergana. Nişanyan rejects the popular gloss ‘auspicious’.

Some old words survive only as surnames and given names. They are small windows onto earlier stages of Turkish. For more, see surnames built from old Turkic name elements and surnames from Turkic words.

How did surnames that read like sentences come about?

In Turkish a verb form can be a name on its own; Yılmaz and Korkmaz are the best-known examples. Some surnames go further and are a whole sentence or idiom:

• Aldıkaçtı: two past-tense verbs side by side: ‘took it and ran’. It looks like a byname for someone who finishes a job fast and disappears.
• Tozkoparan: ‘dust-raiser’, said of someone moving very fast.
• Kılıçsallayan: ‘sword-swinger’, a fighter.
• Zincirkıran: ‘chain-breaker’, expressing strength and resolve. Zincir comes from Persian, kırmak from Old Turkic.
• Yerebakan: ‘looking at the ground’, a byname pattern for someone shy or modest who keeps their eyes down.
• Cankurtaran: ‘life-saver’; the dictionary gives both ‘lifeguard’ and ‘ambulance’. Nişanyan Adlar notes that the word was used for an ambulance in the first half of the 20th century.
• Dilâçar: ‘opener of language’; dil here means ‘language’.
• Çamkerten: ‘pine-notcher’, one who cuts notches in pine trees. No source discusses the surname itself; the meaning follows from its parts.

Bynames like these may seem to describe a trait of an ancestor, but they say nothing about the people who carry the surname today. For how they are built, see how Turkish surnames are formed; for all such names, see nickname surnames.

Which surnames preserve forgotten trades and offices?

Jobs that no longer exist live on in surnames:

• Karakullukçu: an attendant who did menial work in the Janissary barracks. According to the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, kara here refers to the menial nature of the work, not to a colour.
• Sekban: Persian sagbān ‘dog keeper’; first a keeper of hunting dogs, later a class of soldier in the Janissary army.
• Şatır: a richly dressed footman who walked beside the horse of the sultan or a vizier in Ottoman processions.
• Kağıtçıbaşı: ‘head of the paper-makers’, the master of those who made or sold paper.
• Abacı: a craftsman who wove or sold aba, a coarse woollen cloth.
• Kaftancıoğlu: ‘son of the kaftan-maker’; in the Ottoman palace the official in charge of the kaftans given as rewards was also called kaftancı.
• Çörekçi: a maker or seller of çörek; in Old Turkic the word meant ‘round bread’.

All occupational names are on the occupational surnames page and military duties on the military rank surnames page. For the traces of Ottoman titles in today’s surnames, see Ottoman and “noble” surnames.

How do you read long, many-part surnames?

The longest entries in our dictionary usually stack several elements:

• Gümülcinelioğlu: Gümülcine + -li + -oğlu: ‘son of the man from Gümülcine’. Gümülcine is the Turkish name of Komotini in the Western Thrace region of Greece.
• Karaibrahimgil: Kara + İbrahim + -gil: ‘the household of Kara İbrahim’. -gil names someone’s household, as in Ahmetgil ‘Ahmet and his family’.
• Söylemezgiller: Söylemez + -gil + -ler: ‘the Söylemez family’. A byname has taken both the household suffix and the plural suffix.
• Yanıkömeroğlu: Yanık + Ömer + -oğlu: ‘son of Yanık Ömer’.

The way to read these names is from the end backwards: first -oğlu, -gil or -ler, then the base, and last the byname in front of the base.

Are there surnames from words whose meaning has changed?

Yes. A surname can preserve the meaning a word had in 1934 or earlier:

• Eloğlu: today ‘stranger, someone else’s son’. According to Nişanyan, el comes from Old Turkic il ‘state, organised people’; the meaning shifted from ‘state’ to ‘country’ and from there to ‘foreign’.
• Bakkal: Arabic baqqāl ‘vegetable seller’. In Turkish the meaning shifted from ‘greengrocer’ to ‘corner grocer’.
• Çirkin: ‘ugly’, from Persian çirkīn ‘dirty’. According to Nişanyan Adlar, as a name it was used as a guard against the evil eye, in fact meaning ‘beautiful’.

The same happens in common surnames: yavuz meant ‘bad’ in older texts and today means ‘formidable, stern’. The shifting meanings of words show why reading a surname through today’s dictionary alone may not be enough. When you look up a surname, ask two questions together: what does the word mean today, and what did it mean when the surname was taken? Where a source allows, the entries on this site give the older meaning as well. For an overview, see the guide to Turkish last names; for words with beautiful meanings, see beautiful and meaningful Turkish surnames.