Some 385,000 Turkish people changed names, surnames in 4 years, says data

ANKARA

Some 385,000 people have changed their names or surnames in Turkey since 2017, the year in which a regulation that allows registry offices to make changes without a court decision became valid, according to a data.

More than 260,000 people changed surnames, and some 124,000 changed their names in a period of four years, according to a data.

“Rabiye” stood out to be the name with the highest number of applications made to change its spellings. Some 894 women requested to change “Rabiye” to “Rabia.”

The names “Hava,” with 836 people, “Esme,” with 526, “Yunis,” with 497 and “Ümüt,” with 479 followed “Rabiye” in the name change list.

“Memet,” “Sümeyya,” “Firdes,” “Perişan,” “Sadet” were also some other names that were commonly changed due to wrong spellings or for having an indecent meaning.

With the regulation, registry offices can change names that have spelling errors, cause misunderstandings, or are against public morality without the need of a court decision.

“Çoşkun” stood at the top of the “mostly changed surnames list,” with 766 people making requests to change their surnames.

“Uğuz” followed “Çoşkun” with 645 people, “İşik” with 563 people, “Çinar” with 472 people and “Top” with 385 people asking to change their surnames.

Surnames like “Kör,” “Aydin,” “Dalkıç,” “Turğut,” “Kahriman” also made it to the top of the list.

Maximum applications for changing names and surnames were made by the residents of Istanbul, the most populous city in Turkey. Some 19,000 people made requests for changing names, and more than 45,000 people made requests to change their surnames in the metropolis, which has a population of 15.5 million.

The capital Ankara, the western province of İzmir, the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, the southern provinces of Antalya and Adana, the northwestern province of Bursa, and the south-eastern province of Şanlıurfa followed Istanbul as the places where most residents applied for changing their names and surnames.

Şanlıurfa topped “the cities in which most surname changes were made,” with some 15,000 people who requested to change their surnames.

Following Şanlıurfa, the number of people who applied to their respective registry offices to change their surnames was around 14,000 in Ankara and 10,000 in Diyarbakır.

The regulation that took effect in 2017 will last until Dec. 6, 2022.