Tamerlan
The name means iron, from the Turkic word timur. Most Poles have never met a Tamerlan, but it is turning up more often now, given only to boys, mostly with families from the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Tamerlan Pronunciation
Tamerlan is pronounced tah-MER-lahn (/taˈmɛrlan/).
What Tamerlan means
Where Tamerlan comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Tamerlan means iron, and that sense sits in the oldest part of the name. It grew from Timur, the Chagatai Turkic word for iron. The longer form Timur-e Lang meant Timur the Lame. Europe turned that into Tamerlane, and Polish shortened it to Tamerlan.
The metal was a man first. Timur ruled from Samarkand in the late fourteenth century and built a vast empire across Central Asia and Persia. His name went into chronicles, then into Christopher Marlowe's play Tamburlaine the Great, printed in 1590. A boy called Tamerlan shares his name with a documented conqueror rather than a legend.
In a Polish class register the name stands out at once. It arrives mostly with families from the Caucasus and Central Asia, where Timur and its forms stay common. The spelling looks foreign, and the meaning under it does not. The name says iron.
How many people are named Tamerlan
1 in 124106 men in Poland is named Tamerlan. 172 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2441 among male names.
Tamerlan's popularity over time
5 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #961 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2024.
Tamerlan as a middle name
Tamerlan is a first name for 172 men in Poland and a middle name for another 4, a 98/2 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 5811th, between Takumi (4) and Tanas (4).
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#5809 Takeshi4
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#5810 Takumi4
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#5811 Tamerlan4
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#5812 Tanas4
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#5813 Tansel4