Where does this surname come from?

Factual Questions
1

What is the place of origin of the surname Oksouzian?

And if you have any information about the meaning of the name, please share.

Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

2

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will be along soon to confirm this, but it sounds Armenian to me. Googling returns a bunch of Oksuzyans [note the variant spelling] on LinkedIn who live in Yerevan, so that’s a vague confirmation at least.

3

Ancestry.com shows one who immigrated from Turkey in 1942. Take that for what it’s worth.
http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?gl=40&rank=1&new=1&so=3&MSAV=0&msT=1&gss=ms_f-40&gsln=Oksouzian&uidh=000

4

Sounds like the Armenian last name Euksuzian

5

Here’s a guess: I think it is Armenian, but with a Turkish root meaning “orphan-son”.

The reason I think this is that “-ian” is an Armenian patronymic suffix roughly meaning “son of”, but the “Oksouz-” looks Turkish to me and a quick search on Ancestry.com shows the name first coming up just before the Armenian genocide as immigrants from Turkey and öksüz is Turkish for orphan.

6

Thank you all very much.

7

Interesting. How do you think people ended up with that name? Would it have been given to children at orphanages whose last names were unknown? Did people take it up (i.e. change their name) to it as a political statement against their parents?

8

I don’t want to make myself into an expert I’m not! I simply recognized that Oksouz/öksüz is such a prototypically Turkish word and looked it up in a Turkish dictionary! In the process of of checking my guess I have found it was pretty much the norms for Armenians in Turkey to have a name with a Turkish root.

I would guess that as surnames tend to have a very literal meaning and it appears Armenian surnames are no different in this regard, so it appears it does denote that whoever first bore this name was probably the son of an orphan.

9

*or possibly an orphan themselves