Turkish2 syllablesAlso a surname
Meaning: iron.
Demir
| Origin | Turkish — demir, iron, from Old Turkic temür |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Iron. The metal itself, with no metaphor attached in the Turkish; the toughness is inferred by the listener |
| Pronunciation | deh-MEER — two syllables, stress on the second, the final r lightly tapped |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100 and rare there; in Turkey it has been gaining as a given name, while remaining far commoner as a family name |
| Variants | Demirhan, Demircan, Demiralp; Timur is the same Old Turkic word arriving by a different road |
| Nicknames | None in Turkish |
| As a surname | Demir, Demirci (smith), Demirel and Demirtaş are all among the commonest family names in Turkey |
History & meaning
Old Turkic had temür for iron. Turkish softened the first consonant and closed the vowel, and the modern word is demir — the thing a hardware shop sells, the material of a girder. The name is that noun and nothing more, which in a language full of nouns-as-names is unremarkable. What is worth noticing is the family resemblance: Timur, the fourteenth-century conqueror Europe called Tamerlane, wore the older form of exactly this word. Demir and Timur are one word in two coats, and a Turkish speaker hears the connection without being told.
The word's real career, though, is behind the given name rather than in front of it. The Surname Law of 1934 obliged every citizen of the new republic to register a hereditary family name, and an entire country chose one within a few years. Faced with that, households reached for the plainest and sturdiest material available: trades, landscape features, animals, metals. Iron did extremely well. Demir, Demirci for the smith, Demirel, Demirtaş, Demiröz and dozens more entered the registry at once and are still near the top of any list of Turkish surnames. Süleyman Demirel, prime minister seven times over and president of Turkey from 1993 to 2000, carried one of them. The consequence for parents is that giving Demir as a first name has a faintly deliberate quality — it is a word most Turks meet at the end of a name, not the start.
Why parents choose it
It is short, hard-edged and completely transparent, and it survives the journey abroad better than most Turkish names: no cedillas, no dotless vowels, nothing an English speaker can mangle beyond stressing the wrong syllable. Parents who like Berk but want two syllables tend to end up here.
Middle names for Demir
Iron takes a lighter partner: Demir Ali, Demir Efe, Demir Kaan, Demir Ozan. The one pairing to resist is Demir Timur, which says iron twice in two languages' worth of history. See the middle names guide.
Famous Demirs
Demir Demirkan, a rock musician and producer, wrote the music for "Every Way That I Can", the song Sertab Erener sang to win the Eurovision Song Contest for Turkey in 2003 — the country's only victory. As a given name Demir is young enough in its current wave that most of its bearers are still in school, so the famous Demirs of the next few decades are mostly not famous yet.
Consider instead
Timur is the same word with a conqueror attached. Berk gives the same hardness in one blunt syllable. Aslan is the other great Turkish noun-name, and means lion.