Pure Turkish Girl Names and Their Meanings (with Abjad Values)

Parents looking for a genuinely Turkish name for their daughter often run into the same surprise: many names that feel Turkish actually come from another language. Defne is Greek, the name of the laurel tree. Nehir comes from the Arabic word nahr, river. Lale, Gonca and Yasemin are Persian. They are lovely names, but they do not belong under the heading "pure Turkish".

The 30 girls' names in this article were chosen from words whose roots are Turkish. For meanings we followed the established definitions in the Turkish Language Association (TDK) dictionaries, and where a name has several meanings we give the main one. Next to each name you will find an Ottoman spelling and the Abjad value of that spelling. First the names, then how to read those numbers.

Pure Turkish or simply familiar in Turkish?

Over the centuries Turkish borrowed a great many words from Arabic and Persian. Names built from those words are fully at home in Turkey today and sound Turkish to the ear. But when the question is origin, the line is clear: a pure Turkish name comes from the language's own vocabulary. Moon, sky, water, star, spring, harvest, love, wish... Some are as old as the Orkhon inscriptions, others were coined in the 20th century from the language's own roots.

While preparing the list we deliberately left out names whose origin is disputed. If linguists disagree about where a name comes from, we preferred not to include it rather than present it as pure Turkish.

Turkish girls' names from nature

Flowers, waters, soil and harvest: most names in this group are the names of things people in Anatolia saw every day. Deniz and Yağmur are given to both girls and boys.

Kardelen and Başak read almost like a little story: one is the flower that breaks through the snow to announce the end of winter, the other the ripened fruit of hard work. Başak is also the Turkish name of the sign Virgo. In the Abjad tradition, however, a person's yildizname sign is not taken from the meaning of the name; it is calculated from the total of the person's name and the mother's name. So a girl named Başak will not necessarily have Virgo as her yildizname sign.

Turkish girls' names from the sky

For the early Turks the sky was direction, calendar and the dwelling of the sacred all at once. That is why Turkish has so many names built on the moon and the stars.

Ayla and Aylin are very close in meaning: both describe the ring of light around the moon. Ülker is not a single star but the star cluster that appears as a small group in the night sky, the Pleiades. In Arabic the same cluster is called Süreyya (Thurayya). Ülker and Süreyya are two names in two languages for the same patch of sky.

Turkish girls' names for character and feeling

The names in this group name a quality or a feeling rather than an object. Some are very old: Ece, Bilge, Umay and Bengü already appear in Old Turkic. Names such as Sevgi, Sevim, Duygu, Özlem, Ezgi and Esin come from words formed from Turkish roots. Bilge is also given to boys.

Umay is the name of a figure believed in old Turkic belief to protect mothers and children; the name appears in the Kül Tigin inscription. Bengü means "eternal": the phrase "bengü taş" in the Orkhon inscriptions means "eternal stone". These two names are among the oldest traces of Old Turkic still alive today.

How is the Abjad value of a Turkish name calculated?

Abjad assigns a number to every letter of the Arabic alphabet. Because Turkish names were written in Ottoman script for centuries, they can be given an Abjad value too. There is, however, no single correct spelling. Turkish vowels do not map neatly onto Arabic letters, so the same name can be spelled differently in different sources. In the tables we used the spelling stored in our site's calculator for names that are already there, and a common Ottoman spelling for the rest. The extra Ottoman letters (such as چ and گ) take the value of their base letter: چ counts as 3, like ج. In the tables we followed the basic rule of Ottoman orthography: in words with front vowels, "g" and "ğ" are written with گ and count as 20 (Çiğdem چيگدم, Ezgi أزگي); in words with back vowels, "ğ" is written with غ and counts as 1000 (Yağmur ياغمور).

Three questions people ask

Why are some values above a thousand? The spellings of Ilgın, Yağmur and Duygu contain the letter ghayn (غ), which alone is worth 1000 in the Abjad table. Because "ğ" in words with back vowels is written with this letter, these names automatically get high values. Ezgi and Çiğdem have front vowels, so they are written with گ and their values stay small. A high value does not make a name "stronger"; it is simply a result of the spelling.

Why can the same name have different values? Because Ottoman spellings differ from source to source in whether vowels are written. Yıldız is a good example: 61 as يلديز, but 51 as يلدز without the middle ي. A single letter changes the value by 10. When you look at a name's value, first check which spelling it is based on.

Is a small or a large value good or bad? No. The number itself is not a verdict. The smallest value in the list is Ece's 9, the largest is Yağmur's 1257, and both are equally beautiful names. In the Abjad tradition the real meaning is sought in the elements the letters carry (fire, air, water, earth) and in how the name relates to the other names in the family.

A short checklist before you decide

• Check the origin: "It sounds Turkish" is not enough. Look the word up in a dictionary.
• Read the full meaning: some names have more than one meaning. Esin means both "inspiration" and "a gentle breeze".
• Fix the spelling: if you are going to calculate Abjad values, spell all the family's names by the same logic, or the comparison will mislead you.
• Say it with the surname: short names (Ece, Ayça) often flow better with long surnames, longer names (Kardelen, Tolunay) with short ones.
• Look at the family: in the tradition a name's value is never read alone but together with the mother's and father's names.

The number in the list is only a starting point

The Abjad values in the tables are the same for everyone. Aylin is 101 in every family, Deniz is 71 in every family. What changes is the family. Next to the letters of the mother's and father's names, the same name can create a balanced picture in one family and strengthen an already dominant element in another. The baby's yildizname sign also comes from the total of her own name and her mother's name, so two girls with the same name can have different signs.

If you already have a Turkish name in mind, now is the time to set it beside your family's names. For more detail and an assessment made for you personally, you can order your analysis right away.

Note: The Abjad values and interpretations in this article are symbolic information based on the Abjad tradition. They do not claim that a name determines a child's life. The final choice of name always rests with the family.