Family name origins & meanings
- Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic) : from the vocabulary word Turek ‘Turk’, either an ethnic name for a Turk or a nickname for someone who was thought to resemble a Turk in some way.
- Croatian (northern Croatia) and Slovenian : nickname for a refugee from the Turks in the 15th and 16th century, from the ethnic term Turek ‘Turk’. Slovenian territory and the northern parts of present-day Croatia were a refuge for Christians from Bosnia when it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire, and from those parts of Croatia that were a war zone. Refugees were thus not ethnic Turks, but Serbs and Croats from ‘Turkey’, i.e. the Ottoman Empire.
- Slovenian : perhaps also a nickname or occupational name from any of various plants named turek, e.g. a kind of flax or a mushroom of the genus Leccinium.
- Polish and Jewish (from Poland) : habitational name from any of several places named Turek, in particular one in Konin voivodeship.