Mustafa Kemâl Atatürk

Hear pronunciation of Mustafa Kemâl Atatürk in Turkish

Superficially, Ataturk's name looks less challenging than some others (e.g. Çağlayan). However, most Westerners, especially native English speakers, get it disasterously wrong.

First, they tend to put a strong emphasis on one part or another of his first name, Mustafa. A good rule of thumb with Turkish is to avoid that tendency: If you feel like you want to emphasize some syllable in a word, don't. It is the same with Mustafa. The word is not Mustafa, or Musstafffa, or anything else. Just plain, straight forward Mustafa.

Then comes the word that creates the most cringe-worthy moments. Most English speakers pronounce Kemâl as camel. Some of them do so explicitly as an insult, but most do that because they know no better. However, even if the insult is not intentional, it may still cause friction given that Ataturk is the founder of the modern Republic of Turkey, and is revered by most Turks.

So, if you can do nothing else, please try to avoid pronouncing Kemâl as camel. Kemâl is a word of Arabic origin, and means perfection/completeness, and has nothing to do with the animal camel. The story goes that Kemâl was a name given to him by his teachers at the military high school he was attending (after Namık Kemâl).

I understand pronouncing the â (as in lâle) is pretty much impossible for English speakers, but you would get style points for not confusing the order of the vowels in Kemâl.

Finally, we come to the last name, Atatürk which literally means the father of Turks. This last name was given by the parliament to the founder of the modern Republic of Turkey, the Supreme Commander of Turkish forces during the Turkish War of Independence, after passing a law requiring every Turkish citizen to adopt a last name.

The word Atatürk is made of two words: Ata and Türk.

They are pronounced one after the other without any special emphasis on either part. The t in Ata is a t, and definitely audible.

Most English speakers pronounce the ü in Türk as the Turkish ö. Again, this is difficult to overcome, but not hopeless.

Hear pronunciation of Mustafa Kemâl Atatürk in Turkish