Türkiye is now the preferred name for the country Turkey. Here’s how to easily type Türkiye with the umlaut in Microsoft Office, Word and Outlook on Windows or Mac. It’s also a good example of the limits or traps in Word’s Autocorrect.
A common trick for a change of name is AutoCorrect, e.g. anytime you type Turkey, Word changes that to Türkiye. But that won’t work properly because there are two Turkeys – the country and the animal leading to mistakes like this: “ We are having Türkiye for Sunday roast dinner.”
Change Turkiye to Türkiye
The simplest solution is to use AutoCorrect to add the umlaut for the ü
Type Turkiye and Autocorrect will change that to Türkiye setup at File | Options | Proofing | AutoCorrect Options | AutoCorrect.
Add a special AutoCorrect
Another way to handle this is using AutoCorrect with a special prefix or suffix, for example:
Type Turkey~ and get Türkiye
In other words, typing “Turkey” leaves you with the animal but “Turkey~” changes to the country name. Use any suffix character you like.
Or show both spellings using a similar Autocorrect:
Type Turkey~ and get “Turkey (Türkiye)”
Or
Type Turkey~ and get “Türkiye (Turkey)”
Typing the ü in Türkiye
Typing ü with an umlaut is possible on any keyboard for Windows or Mac.
On a Mac it’s very simple, just hold down the letter u for a moment and a little menu will appear.
Click on the letter you want or type the number below it (4 for ü)
It’s not so easy in Windows though Word and Outlook have a shortcut to make umlauts
Type Ctrl + Shift + : (nothing appears in the document) then the vowel
e.g. Ctrl + Shift + : then u – will make ü
Türkiye not in Word’s dictionary
It’s a little surprising that Türkiye isn’t in Word’s English language dictionary yet.
The United Nations changed the label to Türkiye in 2021 and the US State Department also uses that label in many situations from early 2023.
Because Türkiye isn’t recognized as a correct spelling in Word, there’s no chance of the grammar context check kicking in,
Add Türkiye to your Word dictionary
There are two options for removing the red squiggly line from any word that Word thinks is spelled wrongly.
- Ignore All – removes the red squiggly for that word in the current document only
- Add to Dictionary – remove the warning from all documents.
Both options are on the right-click menu.
Why the name change?
Strictly speaking, the country hasn’t changed its name. The official name has been “Türkiye Cumhuriyeti” since the republic was declared in 1924. “Turkey” is the commonly accepted English version. See Wikipedia
The current government has moved to the ‘proper’ spelling over the last few years, but not without controversy.
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