Origin·63 surnames
Surnames from other languages
- Surnames
- 63
- in this dictionary
- In the national top 30
- 0
- ADNKS 2025
How did these words enter Turkish?
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.
One of the oldest contacts is Sogdian. Sogdian was an Iranian language spoken along the trade routes of Central Asia, and Old Turkic took several words from it. Kent ‘town’ is the best-known example; dictionaries trace it to a Sogdian word. It lives on in place names such as Taşkent and Yarkent. Old Turkic texts also contain words from Chinese and Sanskrit, though the route of some of them is disputed. A Chinese source has been proposed for inci ‘pearl’, for instance, but that view is not generally accepted as settled.
The second major source is the Slavic languages. In the Ottoman Balkans, Turkish and Slavic languages were used side by side for centuries. Andreas Tietze treated Slavic loanwords in Turkish popular speech in a separate study in 1957. Voyvoda ‘army commander, governor’ is a Slavic title that was also used in Ottoman administrative language. Kral ‘king’ comes from the Slavic languages too, and the word’s ultimate source is a personal name.
Hungarian, Georgian and other neighbouring languages gave Turkish a limited number of words. Some words of Hebrew and Syriac origin reached Turkish mostly through Arabic. In such cases the site shows separately the language from which the word passed directly into Turkish and its oldest known source.
This layer is rare in surnames. Surnames were mostly chosen from the commonest Turkish words, while most of the words here are either old and forgotten or confined to local use. Even so, surnames such as Kral, Voyvoda and İnci show traces of these languages.
A word enters this page only when sources tie it to a documented language. If no source settles the origin, the record stays unknown and is not published. When sources propose different languages, the record counts as disputed.
The path of the words on this page is often long. Kral shows this well. The personal name from which it started widened in the Slavic languages to mean ‘ruler’, and the word passed into Turkish with that meaning. Turkish sometimes breaks up an initial consonant cluster with a vowel, so the word is also pronounced kıral, and both forms can appear as surnames. The site’s root record does not show every link in the chain. The language that passed the word directly to Turkish and the oldest form named in the source are enough.
For etymologies, the Nişanyan dictionary and the TDK Güncel Türkçe Sözlük were consulted. Each record tells only the journey of a word.
All surnames from other languages
| # | Surname | Meaning | Letters |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Acun | world, universe | 4 |
| 02 | Acuner | man of the world | 6 |
| 03 | Ahıskalı | from Ahıska | 8 |
| 04 | Akşit | ruler (the Sogdian title Ikhshid) | 5 |
| 05 | Alanyalı | from Alanya | 8 |
| 06 | Aras | the Aras river | 4 |
| 07 | Arda | Arda River; marker stake | 4 |
| 08 | Arpad | Árpád, the Magyar leader | 5 |
| 09 | Arun | the name Aaron (Harun) | 4 |
| 10 | Asaf | Hebrew name; the wise vizier | 4 |
| 11 | Aşkenazi | of Ashkenaz | 8 |
| 12 | Baksı | teacher, bard, shaman | 5 |
| 13 | Batum | the city of Batumi | 5 |
| 14 | Batumlu | from Batum (Batumi) | 7 |
| 15 | Boşnak | Bosniak | 6 |
| 16 | Cankat | name from Circassian epics | 6 |
| 17 | Çerkez | Circassian | 6 |
| 18 | Çoruh | a river flowing into the Black Sea | 5 |
| 19 | Göle | Göle, a district of Ardahan | 4 |
| 20 | Ilgaz | Mount Ilgaz | 5 |
| 21 | Israel | Hebrew name: ‘he strives with God’ | 6 |
| 22 | İslimyeli | from İslimye (Sliven) | 9 |
| 23 | Kamhi | connected with flour (Hebrew qemaḥ) | 5 |
| 24 | Kansu | the name Kanşav; Mamluk sultan Qansuh | 5 |
| 25 | Karpat | the Carpathian Mountains | 6 |
| 26 | Kars | the province and city of Kars | 4 |
| 27 | Karslıoğlu | son of the man from Kars | 10 |
| 28 | Kent | city | 4 |
| 29 | Kenter | townsman, bourgeois | 6 |
| 30 | Kentmen | town + -men | 7 |
| 31 | Keşmir | Kashmir | 6 |
| 32 | Koçan | corncob, stalk | 5 |
| 33 | Kohen | Hebrew ‘priest’ | 5 |
| 34 | Kosova | Kosovo (place name) | 6 |
| 35 | Levi | Hebrew personal name | 4 |
| 36 | Malkoç | raider chief; the Malkoçoğlu family name | 6 |
| 37 | Mardin | from Mardin (province) | 6 |
| 38 | Menemencioğlu | son of the Menemenci | 13 |
| 39 | Meriç | the Maritsa river | 5 |
| 40 | Mete | name of the Xiongnu ruler Mete Han | 4 |
| 41 | Moralı | from the Morea | 6 |
| 42 | Muğan | the Mughan plain | 5 |
| 43 | Oruç | fasting | 4 |
| 44 | Oruçoğlu | son of Oruç | 8 |
| 45 | Öztuna | pure Danube | 6 |
| 46 | Öztunalı | true Danubian | 8 |
| 47 | Pamir | mountain range in Central Asia | 5 |
| 48 | Pandur | guard, constable | 6 |
| 49 | Pelin | wormwood | 5 |
| 50 | Seyhan | the river Seyhan (Adana) | 6 |
| 51 | Sobacı | stove-maker | 6 |
| 52 | Sokullu | from Sokol | 7 |
| 53 | Sümer | Sumer, ancient Mesopotamian people | 5 |
| 54 | Tabur | battalion | 5 |
| 55 | Taşkent | Tashkent; stone town | 7 |
| 56 | Teoman | the Xiongnu ruler Teoman; chief | 6 |
| 57 | Tuna | the Danube | 4 |
| 58 | Tunalı | from the Danube region | 6 |
| 59 | Tunca | the river Tunca (Tundzha) | 5 |
| 60 | Vanlı | from Van | 5 |
| 61 | Vanlıoğlu | son of the man from Van | 9 |
| 62 | Vardar | name of a Balkan river | 6 |
| 63 | Yenal | name of a Circassian hero; ‘he attains’ | 5 |
Common questions
- Is the word kent Turkish?
Dictionaries trace kent to a Sogdian word. Old Turkic borrowed it at a very early date.
- Do words of unknown origin appear on this page?
No. This page covers only words that sources tie to a documented language. Records whose origin cannot be settled are not published.
Sources
- 1Sevan Nişanyan, Nişanyan Sözlük
- 2Türk Dil Kurumu, TDK Güncel Türkçe Sözlük
- 3Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi (TÜBA), Türkçeye Armağan Bir Ömürden Bir Ömürlük Eser: Prof. Andreas Tietze “Tarihî ve Etimolojik Türkiye Türkçesi Lugati” (with a bibliography of Tietze’s loanword studies: Greek 1955/1962, Arabic 1958, Slavic 1957, Persian 1967, European 1952)