What is this blue "protective circle" figure called?

Factual Questions
1

Picture:

I’m traveling in Türkiye and this is everywhere. The markets are full of jewelry, handbags, shirts, etc. festooned with this figure.

We’ve seen them in many places in our travels: Greece, Tunisia, Morocco, etc etc. It’s clearly well known and popular.

What’s not well known, apparently, is what the thing is called.

My wife (Iranian born) calls it “the symbol of protection from the evil eye.” And that terminology is common, as I’ve searched for a name. For example:

Imgur

What surprises me is that there isn’t a single simple name for the thing. Like, “That’s an ‘X,’ it protects against the evil eye.” Because “that’s a blue protection against the evil eye circle” is pretty unwieldy.

My wife did some searches of her own in Farsi, and believes it might have adapted somehow from the eye of Horus. I’m skeptical:

Any better information? My attempts to google have been fruitless.

2

It appears to be called the Evil Eye, or Nazar !

Evil eye amulets are often blue, in the shape of an eye, and are known as nazar , which translates from Arabic as "sight and attention.

3

Nazar (amulet)

The nazar was added to Unicode as U+1F9FF :nazar_amulet: NAZAR AMULET in 2018.[8]

4

Thank you! This has been driving me nuts.

5

Yes, when we were in Turkiye we got one, it hangs on our Christmas tree each season to protect it from the evil eye. I only saw them called “Evil Eye” there.

6

From that Wikipedia article:

Historically old, the blue bead has gained importance as an item of popular culture in Modern Turkey.

7

I’ve also seen the Greek “maloike” (which also means “evil eye”).

8

My favorite west coast-based bead supplier calls these “evil eye beads,” marketed as providing protection against the evil eye. Most of them are blue, but they have some multipacks featuring brown, black, green, red, and purple eyes.

9

Nazar boncuğu is the Turkish name for it.
nazar = the evil eye
boncuk = bead
boncuğu = its bead
So nazar boncuğu = bead of the evil eye

10

I haven’t seen “maloike” but I have seen “mati” or “madi”, which directly translates as just “eye”, but in this context means “evil eye”. The actual Greek is μάτι (mati) so “madi” is technically a mispelling. It can also be called κακό μάτι (kako mati) which translates to “evil eye”.

It can also be called φυλαχτό (fylachto) which means “talisman”. This is a more generic word though and refers to any sort of talisman.

11

That has always confused me because it is a talisman against the evil eye. At one time I thought it was called the “Eye of Athena” but apparently I am the only person to ever think that.

12

Never mind.