Would it be wrong to call a boy Teodor? Is there anything withing the Turkish culture/religion that makes it unsuitable? (Teo=God in Greek)

I kinda need to know

personally, ill think hell be happy heheheh

not offended at all,

unless hes religious or smthg

but i dont think so

It might get confused for Theodore!!!

Western names are not welcomed in Turkish culture? I met some Turks with western names but it´s not a general acceptance. I find it odd to choose a western name when we have plenty of names to choose from. Personally I would never ever thought of doing such a thing. Even if you have an intention that may nott be possible because when you register the name of your new born that name can be rejected by the officials if it is not a known name or does sound westernish. If you insist you may have to file a case in the courts. Once I had watched some news on TV about a father giving "Fidel" name to his son because of his admiration to Cuban leader Fidel Castro. But he had to go the court for it (the news was about it).

That said, as a coincidence we have "Teoman" in Turkish (a name revived from Hunnic times) and Teoman would be shortened as "Teo" among friends.

A British couple I know here have recently become Turkish citizens and they have to take  Turkish names.  They chose Hakkým and Lale.  We still call them by their English names though!   I know a Welsh/Turkish couple who have a son called Dilhan - which works for both languages!

wow.... i didn´t know that choosing a western name would be an issue. i couldn´t imagine having another name other than what i have now.

i have one question... how about giving two names? most Turkish people i know only have one name. Would it be acceptable if... having a first name in Turkish and a second name differently? For example hmmm... Ahmet Emileo and Familyname.... i´m curious...

Why I am so not suprised by this crap.... get over your selves

Wow....Turkey is so multicultural and embraces all cultures eh?  NOT!  Stick with tradition and name all boys after Ottomans or Attaturk, it is so original

Turkish food, Turkish names...... 

 this is very weird and i hate it.

 Extremely weird

Imagine if we insisted all Osmans and Mehmets in the UK had to change their name!

 It is a bit isn´t it?  - can´t see why myself.

I didn´t think they actually had to CHANGE their names (like by a kind of deed poll) - but you´ve got me wondering now - I will have to ask them.

Oops. For years the most populair names in Amsterdam for newborns are Mohammed and Mehmet. Sorry parents, you MUST choose real Dutch names for your son as: Klaas, Jan, Piet, Meindert, Teun, Koos.....

 actually many non-turks were forced to change their names into turkish. dont ask me why.

 Because everything western is BED BED BED!

(Unless you are tourists with money.....)

And yet in the tourist resorts the bar/boat boys love to tell you their ´English´ names! Tom, Simon and Jimmy seem to be the favourites! 

any answers to my question?

why not? why isn´t it a good idea? i have two names Samantha Justine, and i know of a turkish guy who has two names as well, but both Turkish names. So combining a Turkish name, and english name is not a good idea? hmmmm i´m really curious why....

Well, Of course nothing can stop you from doing it. But we like it if somebody changes their name and uses a Turkish name when they decide to live in Turkey (just like we appreciate it if somebody speaks our language). Chance are even if you don´t change your name, we eventually would call you with a (similar sounding) Turkish name. That would only mean that we think you are one of us now.

Last night I was watching TV and there was a news about former Fenerbahçe player "Mehmet" Aurelio (originally from Brasil but he´s also got Turkish nationality and his real name is Marco Aurelio). He plays for Real Betis in Spain now. They showed his shirts purchased by Real Betis fans and it reads Mehmet Auralio on them. And guess what is written on the plate of his car. TC 1881. And guess what it means. TC means Turkish Republic in Turkish and 1881 is the birth year of Atatürk. We like this kind of things.

You shouldn´t have to change something about yourself to please the crowd. It´s more of a "if you want to accepted by us you better look like us!"

Learning the language of the country you live in is one thing - changing yourself is something else.

if a turkish footballer who plays for germany ( like Mesut Özil, Mehmet Scholl) changed his name as Hans, he would be considered as a traitor in turkey we turkish are not understandable at all !!!

Hehehehe

That is why we love you all so much

In fact changing names policy is not only adopted in Turkey.

People who immigrated from the middle east to south american early 1900 until mid 60s were obliged to change their names, the same goes for mexico and the united states.

So mohamed becomes manuel in mexico and michael in the US, suleiman becomes solomon in the US, khattar = tucker, Nasser = Nash, salman = Sam, and the list goes on.

In south american there was an official names list and if a name is not listed then you have to change it.

Where as in the US, it was left to the imagination of the immigration officer in Ellis Island.

I am not sure whether the chinese immigrants who passed through san fransisco faced the same thing...may be they named every  LEE or Chan because it is easy to pronounce such names! am only guessing..

I can tell about Ellis island because my grandfather passed through there...

So you see not only western names are BED BED but eastern as well depends on  which side you come from

If anyone is interested in checking names on ship manifest  here is the link

http://www.ellisisland.org/

who knows may be you find a distant relative

I found my grandfather records on ships he took from (mount lebanon, Turkey) to the US during his many trips to and from the US. At that time Lebanon was still under ottoman rule and lebanese had ottoman passports.

yes i agree...

If that rule is an official and legal one (I dont know), I have found another reason never to want to apply to Turkish citizenship. My first always was that it could get me in jail for criticizing something. The second was to have to put your religion on your passport (and dont tell me ´it is not compulsory´, not writing it simply means you are not a sunni muslim, so you might as well just write it), now the third is the name change.

I really object to it. I understand that letters that are not in the Turkish alphabet are changed, I think it happens everywhere for a logical reason. but a full name change? I was born with this name. My parents gave it to me and I consider it as a sort of gift from them. They named me and it made me theirs even more. So who are ´you´ to take it away for funny reasons as  ´you like it when we learn your language´ (I dont see the connection with my name really.), ´you have difficulties pronouncing our names´ (then make some goddamn effort, like it was that easy for us to pronounce your names), ´you want to make us feel like we are one of you´ (we already felt like that otherwise we wouldnt apply for citizenship I suppose, and apart from that, you could easily give someone a second nick name or whatever, but take away something so personal and then say ´we just wanted to make you feel at home´?? )

Really.

I would either never ever in a million year think of changing my name, or becoming citizen of another country or living another country (well maybe for a short while only).

Turkish people not only change my name while pronounciating (I can stand that, all English and German speaking people do it as well) but they - when I tell them how to pronounce - also write it differently. My name suddenly changes into Türüdi.

But most fun I have when officials or hotel staff need to copy my name from my passport. I have 3 given Christian names and a surname that consists of two words. Well, I´ve seen all options but very rare the correct one.

maybe, just maybe because you Dutch people have a strange ( ) way of pronouncing things! the street names in your country can only be rememberd as "this one", "that one", "the one with that river", "the one with 4 a´s and 6 t´s next to each other (in the name)"

I agree that Duch is painful to listen to and impossible to read correctly or even close to correctly! But still, the hardest language of all is Hungarian - even driving through Hungary hurts. Those people have city names consisting of 20 letters in unpronounceable clusters. You drive towards a sign, start reading the name and ...you´re out of the city already. Terrible!

 I didnt know that in Turkey they mention the religion on the passport, I thought turkey is secular!

Once a friend of mine was asked by a french official if he wishes to change his name to a french one when he applied to the citizenship, my friend replied, I am not a criminal who is fleeing justice in my country and i need to hide and change my name. I would like to keep it as is..

nice answer no?

 Not true. You dont have to take a Turkish name. you just have to make sure your name can be written in the Turkish way.

My name is Marion. (PS: please note this everyone who writes Marionin. My nick is MarioninTurkey = Marion-in-Turkiye!)

On my Turkish ID card it is written Mariyon.  No need to change it to Meryem, Lale, Ayþe or whatever. 

 Quite a lot of my foreign friends married to Turks use this compromise.

I know a

   Can Daniel...

   Deniz Melissa..

   Sam Emin ...

   Cem Nathan ...

   Gizem Shelly ...

   Kayra Grace ...

Just the thing to watch out for is that if you have 2 names, in england we use the first one: Edwin P. Starr. In Turkey they use the second one: M. Ali Þimþek

Thanks for this Marion(in ) - I think the guy I was talking about is a bit ´full of it´ if you know what I mean!  I tend to take most of what he says with a pinch of salt  but if the English name isn´t suitable to write ´in the Turkish way´ do you think it´s possible they were asked to use another name?  And could I use my name - Jill - for example or would they want me to write ´Jale´ (which I´ve been told approximates to my name)?

 oh, dear, maria, you cant just simply state so. you dont know everything, do you. i personally didnt know that turks forced other nationals (not all of them) to change their names until i read a few articles and heard stories.

 i never get irritated when people cant pronounce my name. actually i find it even funny. i listened to my name spoken by koreans for many years(BARAN which in russian means ram), it was a bit offending.

I agree on what you say. I know someone by the name of "nayif" who had to change his name in france because it resembles "naive" and everyone used to laugh at his name.

I would say the name should be changed if it has a humiliating meaning in the other language.

Bobby might be a nice name for english speakers but in lebanon it means a puppy

My name in turkish means "paternal aunt"!

That just reminded me of a friend who is a member of TC (although he hasn´t been around for a while).  His name is Mustafa - known as Musti.  Then someone told him that ´Musty´ means ´damp and rather smelly´ in English! 

I am afraid it must be something for Americans (of Polish descend...?) that they can´t pronounce our beautiful language. What is wrong with: ´Jonkheer Ruys de Beerenbroucklaan´? Easy, isn´t it?

 hehehe.....I have never heard of Junk Rays near Beer and Brocolli......Is it anywhere near Bath Towels on Tea and Greenbeans?

 You have been there! It´s just two blocks away!

 And you thought I couldn´t read Dutch! 

 I will never doubt your abilities again!   (But I bet I can write a text you cannot read!)

well.... ermmmmm........ "junky buys the beer brooklyn"... it makes sense to you?

yeah, that´s hilarious I´m lucky that my name doesn´t have any meaning in english, nor does it resembe anything hahaha... but imagine being "Engin" and becoming "engine" in english for example...

 Of course it does... See, it´s really your shortcoming....

 this is a best ever dutch i ever heard. lisa´s dutch is nothing to compare with

 My Dutch is still better than yours!!

 For a neutral judgement: ask DK or Chantal, but I think you´re right!

oh... thank you canim...