Surname index·Letter
Surnames beginning with Z
Only 22 surnames begin with Z, 0.6% of all entries, which makes it one of the rarer initials. None of them is in the national top 30 of TÜİK ADNKS 2025, so each is rarer than every name on that list.
- Surnames
- 22
- in this index
- In the national top 30
- 0
- ADNKS 2025
22 surnames in Turkish alphabetical order
- Zafer victory, triumph
- Zaim leader; holder of a land grant
- Zaimoğlu son of the fief-holder
- Zaman time, era
- Zana knowing, wise
- Zararsız harmless
- Zarifoğlu son of Zarif
- Zeki intelligent, clever
- Zemzem the Zamzam well and its water
- Zengin rich, wealthy
- Zeren steppe gazelle
- Zeybek Aegean irregular fighter; folk dance
- Zeydan Arabic name; increase, growth
- Zeyrek perceptive, clever
- Zeytinoğlu son of Zeytin (olive)
- Zileli from Zile
- Zincirkıran chain-breaker
- Ziya light
- Zor strength, force; hard
- Zorba bully, tyrant
- Zorlu strong, formidable
- Zorluer strong man
The letter Z in Turkish surnames
Native Turkish words practically never begin with z, so Z-words are loans, chiefly from Arabic and Persian: zafer ‘victory’, zeki ‘clever’ and ziya ‘light’ are Arabic, zor ‘force; hard’ and zengin ‘rich’ are Persian. Surnames follow suit: Zorlu joins Persian zor to the Turkish suffix -lu, and Zengin and Zeyrek are Persian words. Z is among the least common initials of Turkish surnames.
The surnames under this letter, in figures
The meanings are spread over 15 categories; the largest are “Intellect and wisdom” (3), “Fortune, blessing and fame” (2) and “Ottoman titles” (2). Borrowed roots are in the majority here: Arabic (10), Persian (6), Kurdish (1), Mongolic (1), against 3 Turkic. On average they have 6.0 letters, shorter than the dictionary average of 6.3. The longest is Zincirkıran (11 letters), the shortest Zor (3). By vowel harmony, names with mixed vowels form the largest group (9), which in surnames usually signals a compound or a loan; 6 have only back vowels and 7 only front vowels.