Ogulgerek

I love boys. They are very important. Being a boy in my culture is being an upper — being, you are going to live a rich and wealthy life if you are a boy, especially your family is going to benefit from you a lot if your are a boy. As it is for boys to do business, build networks and they can be trusted on important matters unlike girls. Thus, I wish I had a brother but we are 10 sisters. I am the 3rd sister and my name is Ogulgerek. It means “son” — ”ogul” and “need” — ”gerek”. My other sisters are Ogulboldy, Oguljan, Ogulshat, Oguljemal, Ogulnazik, Ogulbagt, Ogulbibi. All the names have “ogul” in their prefix. Our parents really wanted a son, but all the babies were girls.

I always felt incomplete as we did not have a brother and I was not a boy. I wonder how our life could be different if we had a son. We struggle financially a lot and my parents complain if only one of us was a boy. But we are not.

We make hand-made embroidery and sew dresses, also we gather together to make carpets from wool. It is called “keche”. There is special technique when we produce paint from natural resources. (As if for now, I don’t really know how they produced the paint but there were red, green, yellow, black and brown colors on the carpets. If you know the technique share your knowledge in the comments.)

On the picture you can see, my grandmother and her sister — sitting, Ogulgerek.

Personally, I find it disturbing that girls are called with such names as “ogul” + … I think it reflects the importance of boys but also undervalue of girls, and indeed it is mostly girls who do hard household chorus and even do creative and intelligent things like making hand-made goods. This post is to bring to attention the names with “ ogul” and revisit the improtance of celebrating girls and their personalities rather than ignoring them and overseeing their importance in a society.

What thought do you have? Feel free to share below.

More examples of “ ogul”+ names:

Ogulay, Ogulbagt, Ogulbayram, Ogulbibi, Ogulbike, Ogulboldı, Ogulbossan, Ogulcahan, Ogulcan, Ogulcemal, Ogulceren, Oguldöndi, Oguldursun, Ogulgerek, Ogulgözel, Ogulgurban, Ogulgül, Ogulhacar, Ogulhal, Ogulhan, Ogulla, Ogulnaz, Ogulnäzik, Ogulnıyaz, Ogulnur, Ogulsabır, Ogulsadap, Ogulsenem, Ogulsoltan, Ogulsona, Ogulsülgün, Ogulşat, Ogultäç, Ogultavus, Ogultotı, Ogulzada, vb.

https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/1567064

name #antroponomi #ogul #turkmen #culture #origin