Circassian names: meanings and origins

Updated October 7, 2026 · 8 min read

A traditional Circassian name is often a small picture or a wish: “happy horseman”, “bright-eyed princess”, “stand firm”. This guide explains how Adyghe and Kabardian names are built, what the best-loved ones mean, which popular names actually come from other languages, and how Circassian family names work.

Nothing here is guessed. The meanings come from two academic name dictionaries, Nashi imena (Maykop, 1999) and the Consolidated Dictionary of Personal Names of the Peoples of the North Caucasus (Moscow, 2012), and the Circassian words from the Kabardino-Cherkess–Russian dictionary (Nalchik, 2008). Each source is listed at the end.

Three kinds of Circassian names

The 2012 dictionary sorts the personal names Circassians use today into three groups: native Circassian names, Muslim names, mostly from Arabic and Persian, and names of Russian origin. The native names are the oldest group, and for the dictionary’s authors the most telling, because their meanings show how people saw the world.

The same dictionary points out that Adyghe, Kabardian and Cherkess speakers pronounce many names a little differently, in regular ways. That is why one name can have several spellings, and why this page gives the Cyrillic form of a name next to its Latin one.

What Circassian names say about the culture

The 2012 dictionary picks out four old values that keep turning up in native names:

• Respect for rank and seniority. пщы, “prince”, and гуащэ, “princess”, also came to mean “the head” and “the woman at the head”, and both appear in many names.
• Hospitality. There was a custom of a guest giving a newborn its name.
• The dog as a guard. Names built on хьэ, “dog”, were meant to turn harm away from a child.
• The warrior and the horse. Riders, iron and fortresses run through boys’ names.

The Kabardian dictionary keeps a trace of the naming custom too: the цIэфIэщ джанэ, a shirt that, by custom, the person who named a newborn gave to the child.

Some names are wishes, and the 2012 dictionary notes that they are still met among older people: Karokh (Къэрэхъу), “may he grow”, or the girl’s name Shigotyzh (Шыгъотыжь), “may she find a brother”. The best known is Teuchezh (Теуцожь), “stand firm”, a wish that the child gets strongly to his feet.

How Circassian names are built

Many native names join two words into one. Learn these parts and you can read dozens of names:

The second part often tells you whether a name is a man’s or a woman’s. The 2012 dictionary lists parts meaning “man”, such as лIы, къо, шъао and пщы, for men’s names, and гуащэ and хъан for women’s. It pairs Dzetl, “warrior man”, with Dzekhan, “warrior woman”, both from дзэ, “army”.

The themes differ as well. Women’s names lean towards beauty; men’s names towards courage, with thunder, swords and metal: Guchips (ГъучIыпс), “iron soul”, Shyblegach (Шыблэгъачъ), “thunder-caller”, and Kalakut (Къэлэкъут), “fortress breaker”.

Popular Circassian girl names

Beauty, the eyes and light lead the women’s names. Eight of the loveliest:

Popular Circassian boy names

Boys’ names are about horsemen, iron, princes and wishes for a strong life:

Names from the Nart sagas

The Nart sagas, the epic tales shared by the peoples of the North Caucasus, gave Circassians several names still in use. Sataney (Adyghe Сэтэнай, Kabardian Сэтэней) is the mother of the Narts, often shown as a wise woman. Sosruko (Саусырыкъу) is the clever hero whose name both dictionaries explain as “son of the stone”, and Tlepsh (Лъэпшъ) is the blacksmith of the Narts.

The 1999 dictionary adds Orzames, Totresh and the name Nart itself; the 2012 dictionary adds Akuanda and Ashamez, both characters of the epic. In the Circassian app, the Kabardian AI tutor is named after the mother of the Narts: Сэтэней-гуащэ, Lady Sataney.

Popular names that came from other languages

Several names that many people take for Circassian came into use from neighbouring languages long ago. Astemir is Turkic: the 2012 dictionary reads it as ас, “unyielding”, plus темир, “strong as iron”. Anzor is Georgian for “free”, and Ruslan goes back to the Turkic Arslan, “lion”, the same word as Aslan.

Origins and meanings from the 2012 dictionary (men’s names) and the 1999 dictionary (women’s names).

The most common Circassian names

For the 1999 dictionary, its authors counted many names on Adygea’s 1995 voter lists, which covered people born in 1977 or earlier. The most frequent women’s names were Aminet, Nuriet and Mariet, from Arabic; the most frequent of Circassian origin was Goshnago, “bright-eyed princess”. Among men, the single most frequent name was a Circassian one: Teuchezh, “stand firm”. The full counts are on the girl names and boy names pages.

Circassian surnames and family names

In Kabardian a surname is унэцIэ, from унэ, “house”, and цIэ, “name”. The dictionary also gives лъэпкъыцIэ in the same sense, and the older лIакъуэцIэ. A family name binds people together, and the language has words for it: зэунэкъуэщ are relatives who carry the same surname, while an унэцIэджэгъу shares your surname without being related. In the past the men of one family and their sworn brothers met at a gathering called the лIакъуэджэ.

In Russian, Kabardian family names are written with Russian endings. The dictionary’s own example: Бэрдыкъуэхэ Али appears in Russian as Али Бердуков, Ali Berdukov; it also mentions families such as the Pshukovs, Kokovs and Shogenovs.

In Turkey, the Surname Law of 21 June 1934 required every citizen to take a fixed, hereditary surname and stipulated that it be Turkish. That is why the official surname of a Circassian family in Turkey is usually a Turkish word.

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Circassian names: frequently asked questions