Unisex Turkish Angora Cat Names

By the early 20th century the original Turkish Angora — the white-coated, often odd-eyed cat from Ankara that 16th-century French travellers had been writing about for three hundred years — had been so heavily crossed with Persians in Western breeding programmes that the natural type was nearly extinct. Turkey responded by treating the breed as a national treasure. In the 1930s the Turkish government established a dedicated breeding programme at the Ankara Zoo to preserve the original Angora bloodline. Until the 1960s, no purebred Turkish Angoras could be exported from the country.

Every modern Western Turkish Angora descends from that Zoo programme. The first US imports arrived in 1962, when Colonel and Mrs. Walter Grant brought a pair named Yıldız and Yıldızcık — Turkish for "star" and "little star" — from the Ankara Zoo. CFA accepted white Turkish Angoras for Championship in 1968 and added non-white colours a decade later.

The breed is built like a longhair Siamese — fine bones, long legs, modified wedge head, tufted erect ears, plumed tail. The single silky coat rarely mats, which is the breed's quiet advantage over the Persian. White is traditional, and odd-eyed Angoras (one blue, one amber or green) are prized in the standard. Owners should know that the W gene combined with blue eye colour can produce deafness, typically only in the ear on the blue-eye side. Responsible breeders pair white to coloured to reduce the risk.

Naming follows the Turkish line directly. Yıldız (the founding cat). Pamuk ("cotton"). Ay ("moon"). Güneş ("sun"). Beyaz ("white"). For Ankara geography: Anatolia, Cappadocia, Bosphorus, Konya. For odd-eyed kittens: Iris, Janus, Aydın ("clear"). For Ottoman-era weight: Sultan, Hurrem, Suleiman.