To sort the names into classifications, I made the following assumptions: The patronym “Abdullah” indicates conversion to Islam, so all slaves named “bt. Abdullah” were converts. Slaves were allowed to keep their birth names until they converted, so any slave with a recognizably Ottoman Turkish name was a convert, even…
The records I used were transcribed from the Ottoman Turkish alphabet into the modern Turkish alphabet, turned into PDFs, and placed online by ISAM, the Istanbul Kadi Registers Project (www.kadisicilleri.org), which focuses on records from the greater Istanbul area. All of the communities represented were in the immediate vicinity of…
These names were borne by a mix of free, enslaved, and converted women. Because of the data spread, the names couldn’t be conclusively placed in one category or another; there were too many freeborn women bearing them to declare that they were slave names, and too many slave women bearing…
These names were commonly given to slave women upon their conversion. While the occasional freeborn woman bore one of these names, to most people the name would strongly suggest that she was or had been a slave. Âfitâb: Persian, “sun.” Aynülhayât: The fountain of life. Bahtiyar Belagat Benefşe Canfedâ Cansever:…
These names could be borne by any Muslim woman, and did not have any connotation of slavery. Âbide Âdile Alemşah: Ruler of the world. From Arabic ʿālam, “world” + Persian shah Amine Asiye Atike Aynî Ayşe: Aisha, Muhammad’s favorite wife. The names Ayşe and Fâtıma were in stiff competition to be…
I entered the original version of this paper in the novice division in the 2018 St. Eligius Arts & Sciences Competition. In 16th-century Istanbul, names followed religion. Muslims, Greek Orthodox Christians, Armenian Orthodox Christians, and Jews each had their own name pools, with very little crossover even between branches of…
Sources about Period Onomastics ONOMASTICON TURCICUM. (L. Rásonyi’s Collection of Turkic Personal Names and the Method of its Publication). (T) M. Mehdi İlhan, “Some Pointers on the Importance of Personal Names in the Ottoman Detailed Cadastral Registers“ Post-Period and Undated Sources While these sources don’t address period names directly, they…
Istanbul was one of the great crossroads of the world, and Üsküdar was home to a mixture of Muslims, Jews, and Greek and Armenian Christians. The court records occasionally note that a petitioner is Jewish (yahudiye) or Christian (nasraniyye), but more often they simply note that the person is a…
Ottoman Turkey was a formal, hierarchical society in love with titles–imperial titles, noble titles, military titles, religious titles, civil service titles. Alongside this love of titles was a steady downward drift of titles, as people from lower ranks tried to co-opt the status of the ranks above them by adopting…