The 'Most Popular' Baby-names, Personal-names, and Family-names in Turkey

Of 70 million Turks living in Turkey, more than 4% (3 million) were named either Mehmet (male) or Fatma (female) at birth!

According to the latest statistics gathered and published by the Turkish Citizenship Bureau's Directorate, there are now 1,537,458 males named Mehmet among living males in Turkey. The personal-name Mustafa follows Mehmet with 1,195,232 recorded occurrences -- then come the personal-names Ahmet, Ali, and Hüseyin.

As for the ladies... at the top of the popular personal-names list is Fatma -- which collected 1,529,179 'votes'. Ayse followed Fatma at 1,161,016 uses -- with Emine, Hatice, and Zeynep rounding out the top five most popular names.

Baby names have begun changing in the past 15 years -- with new baby-names beating out old names for popularity. For example, when you just consider male and female children born between 1990 and 2000... for the first time, the name Emre (for boys) and Büsra and Merve for girls -- have appeared among the top 5 baby-names. And if you only consider the period 2000-2005, Furkan (for boys) and Irem (for girls) are baby-names that have appeared in the top 5, also for the first time.