Turkish Patronymic Surnames Ending with -oğlu ‘Son of

Abstract

This study examines Turkish patronymic surnames ending with the suffix -oğlu ‘son of.’ For this examination, this investigation compiled three corpora of Turkish surnames (N = 10,369) representative of the Turkish population. The aim of this corpus analysis was the identification of the conceptual and grammatical functional elements of these surnames as markers of linguistic and cultural diversity within Turkey. The findings reveal that the Turkish patronymic surnames did not merely denote the name of someone’s father. They also reflect manifold cognitive diversity and express meta-language awareness of Turkey’s intercultural richness. Consequently, this article contends that integrating insights gained from surname research into the foreign language classroom may assist learners of Turkish in overcoming language and cultural barriers. As this study concludes, the findings presented here and in analogous research can help language learners gain a better understanding of the meanings and cultural symbolism embedded in names.

Keywords

• patronymy
• surnames
• anthroponymy
• cognition
• Turkey
• meta-language awareness