Berkay
A Turkish name reading "firm as the moon", carried by only about 140 men in Poland. Most Poles will never meet one, and no boys have been given it in recent years.
Berkay Pronunciation
Berkay is pronounced ber-KAH-ih (/bɛrˈkaɨ/).
What Berkay means
Where Berkay comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Berkay comes from Turkish. It joins two short words: `berk`, meaning firm or strong, and `ay`, meaning moon. Read together they give firm/strong moon, silny jak księżyc in Polish. The older form behind it is `Berkkan`, and `berk` itself reaches back to Old Turkic, where it meant hard, solid, robust.
The name belongs to modern Turkey rather than to old legend. Short names built from `berk` spread widely there in recent decades, and Berkay became one of the common ones. The Turkish singer Berkay Şahin, born in 1981, performs under the single name Berkay, which keeps it familiar to a younger audience.
There are no diminutives here, no Polish softening into a `-ek` or `-uś`. The name stays whole. In a Polish class register it would stand out among the Kacpers and Antonis as plainly foreign. What holds it together is that final `ay`, the moon that `berk` keeps firm.
How many people are named Berkay
1 in 150325 men in Poland is named Berkay. 142 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2743 among male names.
Berkay as a middle name
Berkay is a first name for 142 men in Poland and a middle name for another 29, an 83/17 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1552nd, between Angus (29) and Earl (29).
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#1550 András29
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#1551 Angus29
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#1552 Berkay29
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#1553 Earl29
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#1554 Emilov29