A 108-million entry dataset was circulated on the internet in August 2022, apparently comprising all Turkish citizens who have been alive at any point after 1925. The data include name, sex, dates of birth and death, parents’ names, place of birth, place of family registry and place of current residence. The demographic and ethnic material of our dictionary is based on this source.

Ethnic and regional variety

The dataset is a good indicator of the sheer regional and ethnic diversity of the country, where the narrowly-defined ‘Turkish’ ethnicity represents about 70 percent of the national population.

‘Mainstream’ Turkish names fall largely in three categories:

1. ‘Traditional’ names that have been commonly used since before the Republic. These are overwhelmingly of Arabic and Islamic origin (Mehmet, Ali, Hüseyin, Ayşe, Fatma, Halime...). There is a smaller number of Persian names (Bülent, Nevzat, Derya, Arzu) and very few actual Turkish names, those usually associated with the rural classes (Yaşar, Bayram, Durmuş, Sevim, Döndü).
2. Neo-Turkish names were introduced in one massive campaign during the years 1934-1936. They were derived from several sources: A- Historic Turkish names from early Islamic or pre-Islamic times (Alpaslan, İldeniz, Kürşat, Aybüke), B- Turkish words newly invented in the course of the so-called Language Reform (Özgür, Yetkin, Kutsal, Ülkü, Esin), C- Random combinations of one-syllable building blocks (Günay, Özkan, Tuğcan, Aysun, Gürsu). Such names are disproportionally adopted by the metropolitan middle classes, notably in İzmir and İstanbul. They are very rare in the Kurdish- and Arabic-speaking parts of the country.
3. Gen-Z names trickled in through the 90s and turned into an avalanche after 2008, when a changed law allowed nearly unlimited onomastic freedom. They include, A- Neo-Islamic names with little or no traditional reference (Miraç, Enes, Ecrin, Ebrar), B- Foreign-sounding names with contrived or no meaning contrived or no meaning (Almir, Doran, Liya, Elisa, Almina), C- Names borrowed from TV drama characters and football stars.

Non-mainstream Turkish names fall into several groups:

4. Three Turkish-speaking sub-groups stand out for their uncommon names in the northeastern provinces of Iğdır, Kars and Ardahan. A- Azeris are Shiite Turks who historically belonged to the Persian empire and the Persian field of influence, B- Karapapaks speak a dialect similar to the Azeris but are Sunni, C- so-called Ahıska Turks, mostly from the districts of Posof and Şavşat, were historically subject to the formerly Georgian lords of Akhaltzikhe.
5. A vast number of Turkish refugees from the lost Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire migrated to Turkey in several waves from 1877 to 1986 and were settled mostly in the western provinces. Their names diverge partly from the mainstream Turkish stock. Particularly those born in the socialist republics of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia after 1944 tend to have Turkish or Muslim names otherwise unknown among Turkey-born Turks.
6. The Zazaki-speaking Alevis of the province of Dersim (Tunceli) use a set of idiosyncratic names which are largely of Turkish origin. The Kurdish-speaking Alevis of the provinces of Maraş and Malatya are noted for adding the suffix +ey to popular Muslim female names.
7. A large number of local or regional names refer to a locally venerated saint. Thus Ökkeş in Antep and Maraş, Abuzer in Adıyaman, Durali in Kızılcahamam, Ahmet Turhan in Sivas, Yemliha and Eshabil in Afşin and Elbistan, Şammas in Aksaray, Durhasan in Silifke, Abitter in Konya Ereğli, Ali Beke in Karaman.

The ‘non-Turkish’ part of the Turkish onomastic spectrum consists of several layers:

8. The native non-Muslim minorities, now reduced to small numbers hovering below 100.000. Their personal names are almost always marked clearly, meaning it is nearly impossible to confuse a non-Muslim name with a Muslim one. The groups under this heading are, in descending numbers, Armenians, Turkish Jews, Syriac Christians, Orthodox Greeks, Antiochene Christians (Arab Orthodox), and Levantine Christians (i.e. native Christians of West European descent).
9. A large number of non-Muslims, almost all women and almost all from former Soviet Bloc countries, have acquired Turkish citizenship since around 1990 by way of marriage. The largest groups are Russian, Georgian, Ukrainian, Moldovan and Romanian. Many Muslim spouses from the former Soviet republics also have Russian or quasi-Russian names.
10. Turkish expatriates and those married to foreign-born spouses tend, especially since about 2008, to name children with foreign or foreign-sounding names. There are now, for example, 1126 Turkish citizens named Denis and no less than 92 named Chloe.
11. An unknown number of immigrants from Arab countries, especially from Syria, possibly more than a million, have taken Turkish citizenship since 2010. Muslim Arab names largely coincide with Muslim Turkish names, except they are always spelled differently, ie. immigrant names are registered using the standard English transliteration of the Arabic original. Thus Ayşe is Turkish, while Aisha is foreign-born Arab.
12. Kurds are by far the most numerous Muslim non-Turkish ethnicity. Kurdish names coincide largely with Turkish names, except: a) Some traditional names, mostly of Arabic origin, are overwhelmingly preferred by Kurds and rarely seen in non-Kurdish parts of the country; b) some Turkish names, particulary Neo-Turkish names created after 1934, are almost never used by Kurds, c) there is an explosive growth of newly minted Kurdish names for Gen-Z children born after around the turn of the 21st century.
13. Native Arabs inhabit the southeastern provinces of Hatay, Urfa and Mardin. Their names resemble those of Syrian and Iraqi Arabs, except they are written in Turkish orthography rather than Arabic. Also, the Arabs of Urfa, especially, show a preference for archaic and unusual Arab names.

We indicate ethnic or local affiliation wherever more than 80 percent of the bearers of a name seem to belong to a specific geographical area or an ethnic/religious community.