New trends in name-giving in Turkey

The author gives a brief review of traditional customs of name-giving in T urkey and analyses some recent trends. The observations are based on 1270 Turkish names collected from the author’s students and reflecting naming practices in T urkey over last several decades. The data has been collected randomly regardless of social, regional, religious or ethnic backgrounds, all names being accompanied by the indication of the age of their bearers. The collected data were categorized into three groups: commemorative names, desiderata names and fortuitous names. This categorization shows the distribution of T urkish names and the changes in the stock of personal names over the years. The traditional name-giving customs are still observed in T urkey, however, new trends are becoming more prominent in the country. The author explains the changes with reference to social evolution which incites young educated parents, most of whom are university graduates living in urban areas and having only one child, to adopt new strategies of name-giving testifying their increasing individualism and weakening ties with traditions. © Sakallı E., 2016