Türkiye Soyadları A sourced dictionary of Turkish surnames

Index·9 languages

Surnames by word origin

The word behind a surname may be Turkic, Arabic, Persian or come from another language. That is a fact about the history of the word; it says nothing about the ancestry of the families who carry the name.

By language

  • Surnames of Turkic origin 2419 surnames The three most frequent surnames in Türkiye are Yılmaz, Kaya and Demir. In TÜİK ADNKS 2025 they rank first to third, with 1,177,896, 899,722 and 876,934 bearers. All three come from Turkish’s own vocabulary. Yılmaz is the negative aorist of the verb yılmak ‘to lose heart’. Kaya ‘rock’ and demir ‘iron’ are nouns used since Old Turkic. Yılmaz · Kaya · Demir · Çelik
  • Surnames of Arabic origin 403 surnames Kasap, hekim, kâtip. These are everyday Turkish words for ‘butcher’, ‘physician’ and ‘scribe’. All three come from Arabic, and all three are surnames. Most surnames of Arabic origin follow this pattern: a word that settled in Turkish centuries ago was chosen as a family name in 1934. Acar · Abacı · Abacıoğlu · Abalı
  • Surnames of Persian origin 332 surnames Şahin is the sixth most common surname in Türkiye. TÜİK ADNKS 2025 counts 688,214 bearers. Dictionaries derive the word from Persian šāhīn, a falcon-like bird of prey. The same list includes Polat (273,871) and Can (230,085). Polat comes from Persian pūlād ‘steel’ and Can from Persian jān ‘soul, life’. Even among the most frequent surnames the Persian layer is plain to see. Şahin · Polat · Özcan · Can
  • Surnames of Greek origin 73 surnames Every Turkish speaker knows the word temel: the foundation of a building, the basis of a matter. Dictionaries trace it to Greek themélion. Temel is also a common surname, and so are Kiraz, Fidan and Fener. All of them are words that passed from Greek into Turkish and came, over time, to be used like native words. Akkiraz · Alayoğlu · Amasyalı · Anadol
  • Surnames of Armenian origin 14 surnames Turkish and Armenian were spoken as neighbouring languages for centuries. Neighbouring languages lend each other words, and these two did. This page looks at words that passed from Armenian into Turkish, and at their place in surnames, from a purely linguistic point of view. Ararat · Arat · Artun · Erşen
  • Surnames of Kurdish origin 8 surnames Kurdish belongs to the Iranian branch of languages. Sources distinguish several varieties within it, Kurmanji among them. Linguists hold different views on where Zazaki fits in this group. This page looks at words that passed from these languages into Turkish, and at their place in surnames, from a purely linguistic point of view. Bese · Çako · Evin · Kalman
  • Surnames of Mongolic origin 54 surnames The relationship between Mongolic and the Turkic languages is one of the most debated questions in historical linguistics. The two groups share a large number of words. Linguists disagree on whether these came from borrowing or from a very old common ancestor. This page stays out of that debate. It deals only with the words and names that dictionaries identify as Mongolic. Aktulga · Alptemoçin · Altan · Anday
  • Surnames from French and other European languages 29 surnames Fırtına is an ordinary weather word in Turkish today, meaning ‘storm’. Its origin is Italian: dictionaries trace it to fortuna, which meant ‘fortune’ and, at sea, ‘storm’. The surnames Fırtına, Kaptan and Volkan are all words that passed into Turkish from European languages. This page groups the European languages other than Greek: Italian, French, Latin and the rest. Aksel · Alabora · Barbarosoğlu · Barka
  • Surnames from other languages 63 surnames Turkish loanwords do not come only from Arabic, Persian and European languages. Over their history the Turkic languages bordered many others across a wide area from Central Asia to the Balkans. Each of these left Turkish a few words or more. This page gathers that small but varied layer, which the site’s other origin pages do not cover. Acun · Acuner · Ahıskalı · Akşit