The article examines the etymology, meanings, and usage of the word bay across Turkic languages from a comparative perspective. Using linguistic data and historical evidence, it demonstrates that bay has long played an active role in the formation of Kazakh male personal names and gradually developed into a national model of anthroponomic formation. The findings show that the term bay in Kazakh anthroponyms revolve around two main structural patterns. The study concludes that from the early twentieth century onwards, Soviet ideology and literature significantly contributed to the emergence of negative connotations associated with the word bay. Examples from Kazakh literary works illustrate this process. It is known that the tradition of creating names for negative character types with bay as the second component survives today; and this process is shaped by social, psychological, literary, and linguistic factors. Materials used in this research include epic texts, folklore narratives, classical and contemporary Kazakh literary works, dictionaries, and population census data. The study utilizes comparative, historical, descriptive, and componential analysis methods. The discussion and conclusion argue that the semantic deterioration of bay reflects not only a linguistic change but also broader ideological and social transformations.