Gunay
A Turkish name that pairs day and moon in its meaning. In Poland fewer than 50 women carry it, so most people here will go a lifetime without meeting one.
Gunay Pronunciation
Gunay is pronounced goo-NAH-ih (/guˈnaɨ/).
What Gunay means
Where Gunay comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Gunay reaches Polish name registers from Turkish, where it joins two small words: gün, meaning day or sun, and ay, meaning moon. Put together they give sun-moon, a day and a moon held in one name. The origin sits outside the Greek and Latin roots that shaped most Polish names.
Across Turkey and Azerbaijan, Gunay belongs mostly to girls. The short Polish gloss, księżyc w nowiu, points to the new moon, the thin sliver that opens the lunar month. That reading came to the name later, after the plain sun-and-moon parts were already there.
A Polish teacher reading the class register might pause on it once, then say it cleanly: Gu-naj. The parts stay simple. It has no Polish diminutive of its own. What stays fixed are gün and ay, the day and the moon.
How many people are named Gunay
1 in 469663 women in Poland is named Gunay. 48 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #5478 among female names.
Gunay as a middle name
Gunay is a first name for 48 women in Poland and a middle name for another 2, a 96/4 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 7803rd, between Gösta (2) and Güner (2).
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#7801 Göktürk2
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#7802 Gösta2
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#7803 Günay2
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#7804 Güner2
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#7805 Güray2