Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Introduction: Surnames and the Construction of Turkish Citizens

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Book cover Naming and Nation-building in Turkey

  • 318 Accesses

Abstract

The Republic of Turkey, successor to the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, was declared in 1923, and thereafter, its government led by Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) launched a series of reforms. These reforms aimed to sever the new republic’s ties with the imperial past, to catch up with Western sociocultural and political standards, and to consolidate a homogenized nationalized citizenry. In Turkish official sources, these reforms are known as Atatürk Inkilapları (Atatürk revolutions). One of the last reforms, the Surname Law of 1934, ruled that citizens adopt Turkish language surnames and gave them two years to register these names at population offices. Citizens were restricted in their choices by Article Three of the law: Names with reference to foreign nationalities, races, tribes, and morally inappropriate and ugly names were prohibited. This book explores this law’s genesis in the cultural nationalist imaginary, drafting in parliamentary debates, its nurturing by the Language Reform, and variously mediated popular reception among citizenry. My project draws from oral historical interviews, parliamentary debates, archival documents, visual and written material from popular media, and previously untapped documents from registries.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Republic of Turkey. Soyadı Kanunu, No. 2525, June 21, 1934.

  2. 2.

    Parts of this manuscript have previously appeared in print (Türköz 2007, 2011).

  3. 3.

    Republic of Turkey, Law No. 2587. 24.11.1934. Kemal öz adlı Cumhur Reisimize verilen soy adı hakkında kanun [Law on the Surname given to our President named Kemal], published in the Official Gazette on 27.11.1934.

  4. 4.

    Religious schools were abolished on March 3, 1924.

  5. 5.

    They are referred to as Atatürk Devrimleri, and the individual reforms are referred to as Şapka Devrimi (Hat Revolution), Harf Devrimi (Alphabet Law), and so on. For a discussion on whether these reforms constituted a revolution, see Yılmaz (2015, 5–6).

  6. 6.

    Republic of Turkey, Law No. 671. Nov 25, 1925. Şapka Iktisasi Hakkinda Kanun [Law on the Hat].

  7. 7.

    Ironically, the fez was instituted during the nineteenth-century reforms as a uniform headgear for Ottoman civil officials. As the non-Muslims in the empire started to wear the European fashions, it became associated with Muslims and even became an emblem of Muslim anti-colonial sentiment beyond the Ottoman Empire.

  8. 8.

    Republic of Turkey, Law No. 697. 26/12/1925. Günün Yirmi Dört Saate Taksimine Dair Kanun [Law on the Division of the Day into Twenty-four Hours] and Law No. 698, 26.12.1925, Takvimde Tarih Mebdeinin Tebili Hakkinda Kanun [Law on the Change of the Calendar].

  9. 9.

    Law No. 1353, Nov 3 1934. Türk Harflerinin Kabulu ve Tatbiki Hakkında Kanun [Law on the Approval and Application of Turkish Letters].

  10. 10.

    Republic of Turkey. Law No. 2590. 26.11.1934. Efendi, bey, paşa, gibi lakab ve ünvanların kaldırıldığına dair kanun [Law on the abolition of such appellations and titles as efendi, bey, and pasha], published in the Official Gazette on 29.11.1934.

  11. 11.

    Resmi Gazete, Dec 27, 1937, Decree No 2-1759, 4589-91.

  12. 12.

    For a comprehensive overview of the emergence of social history of modern Turkey, see Brockett (2011, 13–37).

  13. 13.

    This official version, as historians note, is marked by a particular periodization that distinguishes between the İkinci Meşrutiyet (Second Constitutional Period) (1908–1918); Milli Mücadele (National Struggle) (1919–1923); and Cumhuriyet (Republic) (after 1923) (Zürcher 1992, 239).

  14. 14.

    In 1534, the Ottoman sultan Suleiman I had several grandiose titles, including, TAC-BAHS-I RU-YI ZEMIN (Dispenser of crowns of the world) or ZILLU ‘LLAHI FI’ L-ARAZIN (Shadow of God on Earth) (Schaendlinger, I:i, cited in Bayerle 1997, 48). Christian sovereigns and dictators were also bestowed titles. Ferdinand I was known in 1534 as IFTIHARU ‘L-UMERA’I ‘L-MILLETI ‘L-MESIHIYE (Laudable pride of the commanders of the community of the Messiah) (ibid., I:1 in Bayerle, 48), and Ottoman dignitaries, such as grand vezirs, could be known by titles such as CELISU ‘S-SALTANATI ‘Z-ZAHIRE (Companion of the flourishing sultanate) (Arif 30, cited in Bayerle 1997, 50).

  15. 15.

    The Turkish spelling of Arabic derived words such as lakab are marked by changing bs to ps. In another example, the word for book, kitab, is spelled kitap in Turkish. This is a product of the Turkish Language Reform of the 1930s which sought to eliminate Arabic and Persian borrowings from Turkish. In this dissertation, the Turkish spelling will be used because that is the version used in the sources and in interviews.

  16. 16.

    One of my respondents told me that he had a student to whose family the community gave the lakab, Köpekboku, or “dog excrement” (Orhan Sorman October, 2000).

  17. 17.

    With the Second Decree for the Enforcement of the Name Law (RGB1 I P.1044), Jewish males became required to add “Israel” to their given name and females, to add “Sarah.” by Jan 1, 1939 (76). Similar laws were also adopted by Austria, where Jews were told not to adopt non-Jewish names, and a list of 1605 Jewish names were published in the Rome newspaper Tevere, warning Italians to be cautious with people carrying those names, since they may be disloyal to fascism (86).

  18. 18.

    http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/project-surname/.

  19. 19.

    A name law passed in 1925, effective until 1991, forbade the adoption of new surnames. A new law in 1996 permits the adoption of middle names, millinöfn, which she argues may have opened a “back door for indeclinable gender-neutral family names” (Willson, 150).

Bibliography

  • Agha, Asif. 2003. The Social Life of Cultural Value. Language and Communication 23 (3–4): 231–273.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Akgönül, Samim. 2006. De la nomination en turc actuel: Appartenances, perceptions, croyances. Istanbul: Isis éditions.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alia, Valerie. 2008. Names and Nunavut: Culture and Identity in the Inuit Homeland. Berghahn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Altınay, Ayşegül, and Fethiye Çetin. 2014. The Grandchildren: The Hidden Legacy of ‘Lost’ Armenians in Turkey. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Altınay, Ayşe Gül, and Yektan Türkyılmaz. 2011. Unraveling Layers of Silencing: Converted Armenian Survivors of the 1915 Catastrophe. In Untold Histories of the Middle East: Recovering Voices from the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Amy Singer, Christoph Neumann, and Selcuk Aksin Somel, 25–53. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Verso Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aslan, Senem. 2009. Incoherent State: The Controversy over Kurdish Naming in Turkey. European Journal of Turkish Studies 10. https://ejts.revues.org/4142

  • Atabaki, Touraj, and Erik Zürcher, eds. 2003. Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization Under Atatürk and Reza Shah. London: I.B. Taurus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Başgöz, Ilhan. 1998a. The Meaning and Dimension of Change of Personal Names in Turkey. In Turkish Folklore and Oral Literature: Selected Essays of Ilhan Başgöz, Turkish Studies Series L: 19, ed. Kemal Silay, 201–215. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1998b. The Name and Society: A Case Study of Personal Names in Turkey. In Turkish Folklore and Oral Literature: Selected Essays of Ilhan Başgöz, Turkish Studies Series L: 19, ed. Kemal Silay, 216–230. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bayerle, Gustav. 1997. Pashas, Begs and Effendis: A Historical Dictionary of Titles and Terms in the Ottoman Empire. Istanbul: ISIS Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bouquet, Olivier. 2010. Onomasticon Ottomanicum: Identification administrative et désignation sociale dans l’État ottoman du xixe siècle. Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée [En ligne], 127 | juillet 2010, mis en ligne le 15 juin 2013. http://remmm.revues.org/6743. consulté le 03 avril 2017.

  • Bouquet, Olivier. 2013. Onomasticon Ottomanicum II: Le voile de l’identité. In Penser, agir et vivre dans l’Empire ottoman et en Turquie, ed. Nathalie Clayer and Erdal Kaynar, 283–306. Louvain: Peeters.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bozdoğan, Sibel ve Reşat Kasaba. 1997. Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brockett, Gavin. 2011. How Happy to Call Oneself a Turk: Provincial Newspapers and the Negotiation of a Muslim Identity. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brunet, Guy, and Alain Bideau. 2000. Surnames: History of the Family and History of Populations. The History of the Family 5 (2): 153–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brunet, Guy, Pierre Darlu, and Gianna Zei. 2001. Le Patronyme: Histoire, Anthropologie, Societé. Paris: CNRS Editions.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bulliet, Richard. 1978. First Names and Political Change in Modern Turkey. International Journal of Middle East Studies 9: 489–495.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burke, Edmund I.I.I., ed. 1993. Struggle and Survival in the Middle East. Los Angeles/Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burnard, Trevor. 2001. Slave Naming Patterns: Onomastics and the Taxonomy of Race in Eighteenth Century Jamaica. Journal of Interdisciplinary History XXXI (3): 325–346.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, Samuel. 1997. Names as Cultural Documents. In These Are the Names: Studies in Jewish Onomastics, ed. Aaron Demsky, Joseph A. Reif, and Joseph Tabory, 13–22. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cover, Robert M. 1983. The Supreme Court, 1982 Term—Foreword: Nomos and Narrative. Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 2705. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/2705

  • Deringil, Selim. 1993. The Ottoman Origins of Kemalist Nationalism: Namık Kemal to Mustafa Kemal. European History Quarterly 23: 165–199. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Doǧaner, Yasemin. 2009. An Identity Construction in the Turkish Republic: The Law on Family Names. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 99: 113–125.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duben, Alan, and Cem Behar. 1991. Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family and Fertility, 1880–1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ender, Rita. 2016. İsmiyle Yaşamak [Living with One’s Name]. Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ertan, Temuçin Faik. 2000. Cumhuriyet Kimliği Tartışmalarının Bir Boyutu: Soyadı Kanunu. Kebikeç 10: 255–272.

    Google Scholar 

  • Georgeon, François. 2000. Les prédécesseurs médiévaux d’Atatürk. Bilge kaghan et le sultan Alp Arslan. Revue d’Etude de la Méditerranée et du Monde Musulman 89–90: 217–243.

    Google Scholar 

  • Göcek, Fatma Müge, and Şükrü Hanioğlu. 1995. Western Knowledge, Imperial Control and the use of Statistics in the Ottoman Empire. Center for Research on Social Organization Working Papers, Michigan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg, Harvey. 1997. Names in Their Social Contexts: An Anthropological Perspective. In These Are the Names: Studies in Jewish Onomastics, ed. Aaron Demsky, Joseph A. Reif, and Joseph Tabory. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 53–64. 

    Google Scholar 

  • Gonon, Anne. 1993. Noms et changements de noms: un aspect de la construction intitutionelle de l’identité japonaise. Geneses 13 (1): 54–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gross, Aeyal M. 1996. Rights and Normalization: A Critical Study of European Human Rights Case Law on the Choice and Change of Names. Harvard Human Rights Journal 9: 269–284.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hull, Matthew S. 2003. The File: Agency, Authority, and Autography in an Islamabad Bureaucracy. Language & Communication 23 (3–4): 287–314.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kaganoff, Benzion C. 1977. A Dictionary of Jewish Names and Their History. New York: Schocken Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1997. Gendering the Modern: On Missing Dimensions in the Study of Turkish Modernity. In Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 113–132.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keyder, Çaglar. 1987. State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development. London: Verso Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levy, Paul. 1960. Les noms des Israelites en France: histoire et dictionnaire. 1st ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, Bernard. 1961. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mardin, Şerif. 1997. Projects as Methodology: Some Thoughts on Modern Turkish Social Science. In Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Massicard, Élise. 2013. Post-hérité. Un retour du patronyme en Turquie contemporaine ? Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 2 (60–2): 87–105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meeker, Michael. 2002. A Nation of Empire: The Ottoman Legacy of Turkish Modernity. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Migdal, Joel S. 2001. State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nautré, Sylvie. 1977. Le nom en droit comparé. European University Papers. Series II: Law. Bd/Vol. 180. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neyzi, Leyla. 2010. Oral History and Memory Studies in Turkey. In Kerslake, C., Öktem, K., and Robins, P. Turkey’s Engagement with Modernity: Conflict and Change in the 20th Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 443–459.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicolaisen, W.F.H. 1976. Words as Names. Onoma XX: 142–163.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ortaylı, Ilber. 1984. Eski Osmanlı Adları [Old Ottoman Names]. Tarih ve Toplum 7: 4–5.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plutzchow, Herbert E. 1995. Japan’s Name Culture: The Significance of Names in a Religious, Political, and Social Context. Sandgate/Folkestone/Kent: Japan Library.

    Google Scholar 

  • Portelli, Alessandro. 1997. The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rennick, Robert M. 1970. The Nazi Name Decrees of the Nineteen Thirties. Journal of the American Name Society 16: 65–88.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schimmel, Annemarie. 1989. Islamic Names. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schutz, Alfred, and Thomas Luckmann. 1973. The Structures of the Life-World. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, James. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, James, John Tehranian, and Jeremy Mathias. 2002. The Production of Legal Identities Proper to States: The Case of the Permanent Family Surname. Comparative Studies in Society and History 44 (1): 4–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Selishchev, A.M. 1979. Changes in Surnames and Given Names. Soviet Anthropology and Archaeology XVII (4): 46–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shaw, Stanford. 1978. The Ottoman Census System and Population, 1831–1914. International Journal of Middle East Studies 9: 325–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spencer, Robert F. 1961. The Social Context of Modern Turkish Names. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 17 (3): 205–218.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stevens, Jacqueline. 1999. Reproducing the State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uspenskii, B.A. 1979. Name Changes in Russia From a Historical and Semiotic Point of View. Soviet Anthropology and Archaeology XVII (4): 25–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Willson, Kendra. 2002. Political Inflections: Grammar and the Icelandic Surname Debate. In Standardization: Studies from the Germanic Languages, ed. A.N. Linn and N. McLelland, 135–152. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Stephen. 1998. The Means of Naming: A Social and Cultural History of Personal Naming in Western Europe. London: University College London (UCL) Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Yıldız, Ahmet. 2001. Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyebilene: Türk Ulusal Kimliğinin Etno-seküler Sınırları (1919–1938) [So Happy is Who He Can Call Himself A Turk: The Ethno-Secular Boundaries of Turkish National Identity]. İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zürcher, Erik J. 1992. The Ottoman Legacy of the Turkish Republic: An Attempt at a New Periodization. Die Welt des Islams 32: 237–253.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Işık University, Şile/İstanbul, Turkey

    Meltem Türköz

Authors
  1. Meltem Türköz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Türköz, M. (2018). Introduction: Surnames and the Construction of Turkish Citizens. In: Naming and Nation-building in Turkey. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56656-0_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation