Turkish2 syllablesA title
Meaning: a noble; a commander holding privileged rank.
Tarkan
| Origin | Turkish — from the Old Turkic title tarkan or tarqan. The ultimate source of the word is disputed |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Traditionally glossed as lord or noble. In practice it named a rank carrying exemption from tribute and other privileges |
| Pronunciation | tar-KAHN — two syllables, stress on the second, the r lightly tapped |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100 and rare there; in Turkey a recognisable name from the late twentieth-century Turkic revival |
| Variants | Tarhan, the usual Turkish surname spelling; Tarkhan in historical writing; Mongolian darkhan |
| Nicknames | None standard |
| Best-known bearer | The singer Tarkan Tevetoğlu, whose 1997 single Şımarık became a hit across Europe |
History & meaning
Tarkan started life as a rank, not a name. It is recorded among the Göktürks and travelled with steppe political vocabulary across half of Eurasia: the Khazars used it, so did the Danube Bulgars and the Avars, and place names in Hungary such as Tárkány are traditionally connected to the same title carried west by conquest-era horsemen. Under the Mongols the word turns up as darkhan, and the charters spell out what it bought — freedom from taxation and immunity from punishment for a fixed number of offences. Where the word itself came from is genuinely unsettled; Iranian and older Inner Asian sources have both been proposed, and it may have entered Turkic from outside rather than started there.
Its life as a modern first name has two causes, both from popular culture. In 1967 the artist Sezgin Burak launched a comic strip about a Hun warrior called Tarkan, which ran for years and spawned a run of Turkish adventure films in the early 1970s, putting the word in front of a generation of children. Then one of that generation's sons became the most famous pop singer in the country. The name is a good example of how the Turkic revival actually reached ordinary families: not through the language commissions, but through comics, films and records.
Why parents choose it
Tarkan is confident without being martial. It has no religious content, nothing to spell out at a hotel desk, and a hard middle consonant cluster that stops it sounding soft. For Turkish families abroad it has the additional advantage of being the one name in this set that a non-Turk may already have heard.
Middle names for Tarkan
Stress on the second syllable means the next name should not compete for it: Tarkan Alp, Tarkan Mert, Tarkan Eren, Tarkan Kerem. Tarkan Alp is two Old Turkic ranks in a row and lands hard, in a good way. The middle names guide covers the rest.
Famous Tarkans
Tarkan Tevetoğlu, born in Alzey in West Germany in 1972 to Turkish parents, has been the biggest pop star in Turkey since the mid-1990s. His 1997 single Şımarık — the one with the kiss — charted across Europe and was rewritten in English as Kiss Kiss, a UK number one for Holly Valance in 2002. Before him the name belonged to Sezgin Burak's comic-strip Hun warrior, a fictional bearer, but the one who put the word back in daily use.
Consider instead
Kaan is the rank above, and shorter. Alp is the plainest Old Turkic word in the set. Timur means iron and is the steppe name with the longest reach into European memory.