Names of the Republic

The 1934 law

On 21 June 1934, the Surname Law required every Turkish citizen to choose a family name. Many families took a new one, built from Turkish words. Aygün joins ay, the moon, and gün, the sun or the day. Uçtum comes from uçmak, to fly: “I have taken flight”. Önergin is so rare that it appears in no public surname database.

Hatay

One Uçtum branch is tied to Antakya and Hatay, the former Sanjak of Alexandretta, which joined Turkey only in 1939. The republican name settled on a land whose borders had just been redrawn.

Ülker

Emine Ülker was born on 3 November 1944 in Maltepe, on the Asian shore of Istanbul, then a seaside village. Her parents were Hasan Aygün and Hatice Neriman Önergin. Adopted by her stepfather, a diplomat, she grew up with her half-brothers Remzi and Merih.

She knew boarding school and a system in which the sciences were taught in English and the humanities in Turkish. After training as a typist, she worked for about two years at Turkish Airlines, then joined her parents in Portugal, where her adoptive father was posted.

Between Istanbul, Paris and New York

From the 1940s to the 1970s, the Uctum family lived between Turkey, France and the United States, often in academic life. Remzi would stay with the Swanns in Paris for a while when Alexander was small; his name became his nephew’s middle name — Remzi, from the Arabic ramz, “the sign”.