Personal Names in Modern Turkey

TL;DR

This comprehensive study analyzes 10,000 Turkish personal names from 2014, revealing patterns in diversity, origins, and semantic themes, with implications for understanding cultural and linguistic influences.

Contribution

It is the most extensive data-driven analysis of Turkish names, combining etymological, morphological, and semantic attributes with population-wide statistics.

Findings

Female names are more diverse than male names.

Certain roots generate many female names with predictable patterns.

Names of foreign, pastoral, and botanical origins are more common among females; animal and historical names among males.

Abstract

We analyzed the most common 5000 male and 5000 female Turkish names based on their etymological, morphological, and semantic attributes. The name statistics are based on all Turkish citizens who were alive in 2014 and they cover 90% of all population. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the most comprehensive data-driven analysis of Turkish personal names. Female names have a greater diversity than male names (e.g., top 15 male names cover 25% of the male population, whereas top 28 female names cover 25% of the female population). Despite their diversity, female names exhibit predictable patterns. For example, certain roots such as g\"ul and nar (rose and pomegranate/red, respectively) are used to generate hundreds of unique female names. Turkish personal names have their origins mainly in Arabic, followed by Turkish and Persian. We computed overall frequencies of names according to broad semantic themes that were identified in previous studies. We found that foreign-origin names such as olga and khaled, pastoral names such as ya\u{g}mur and deniz (rain and sea, respectively), and names based on fruits and plants such as filiz and menek\c{s}e (sprout and violet, respectively) are more frequently observed among females. Among males, names based on animals such as arslan and yunus (lion and dolphin, respectively) and names based on famous and/or historical figures such as mustafa kemal and o\u{g}uz ka\u{g}an (founder of the Turkish Republic and the founder of the Turks in Turkish mythology, respectively) are observed more frequently.