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• Anglicize
  Anglicize

  verb (used with or without object)

  to make or become English in form or character.
• anglicize
  anglicize

  verb

  (sometimes capital) to make or become English in outlook, attitude, form, etc

Anglicize

American  

[ang-gluh-sahyz] / ˈæŋ gləˌsaɪz /

especially British, Anglicise

verb (used with or without object)

Anglicized, Anglicizing

1. (sometimes lowercase) to make or become English in form or character.

   to Anglicize the pronunciation of a Russian name.

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anglicize British  

/ ˈæŋɡlɪˌfaɪ, ˈæŋɡlɪˌsaɪz /

verb

1. (sometimes capital) to make or become English in outlook, attitude, form, etc

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Other Word Forms

• Anglicization
  noun
• anglicization
  noun
• de-Anglicize
  verb (used with object)
• half-Anglicized
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of Anglicize

1700–10; < Medieval Latin Anglic ( us ) English + -ize

Explanation

To anglicize something is to change it so that it appears to be more English. Immigrants to the United States sometimes anglicize their names so they're more familiar to English-speaking Americans. If you anglicize your house, you might decorate it in the style of a British tea room, and if you anglicize your Polish name, you make it sound less Polish and more English. Throughout history, places that were colonized by England were forced to anglicize many of their place names — one example is Kolkata, India, which was anglicized to "Calcutta" and changed back in 2001. Anglicize comes from the Latin root Angli, or "the English."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Anglicize anglicize Anglicized Anglicizing

Emily Woo Zeller, a Chinese American narrator, has sometimes clashed with directors and QC over whether to Anglicize the pronunciation of words taken from other languages, such as tofu or kung fu.

From Slate ● Jun. 21, 2021

Robin Philpot, a prominent Quebec writer, argued that Montreal should guard against a long-standing drive by the British conquerors of Quebec and their descendants to Anglicize the names of streets and bridges in the city.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 10, 2020

I’m positive that if the show’s creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, did her level best to Anglicize the cast and avoided their Jewishness at all costs, Brownfield would be criticizing her for that.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 12, 2019

The Taubs first persuaded the vineyard that produced the wine to Anglicize its name.

From New York Times ● Nov. 23, 2012

A similar fate has attended the attempt to Anglicize the orthography of another class of words, which we have received from the French.

From Noah Webster American Men of Letters by Horace E. Scudder

It's common for Italian Americans like DeSantis to anglicize their names, swapping, in the governor's case, the Italian pronunciation of "day" with "deh," Professor William Connell, Seton Hall Unveristy's chair of Italian Studies, said.

From Salon ● Jun. 1, 2023

“Now, to make it even more fun, if you anglicize the Spanish phonetic spelling, that’s when you finally get to ‘Hueneme.’”

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2022

During last summer’s World Cup, Australian TV anchor Lucy Zelić was criticized for pronouncing players’ ethnic names correctly, a refusal to anglicize that some viewers saw as obnoxious overpronunciation.

From Slate ● Feb. 14, 2019

Lots of people with names difficult to spell and pronounce anglicize them, so maybe that's a possibility here, since you mention other family members have done something similar.

From Slate ● Aug. 13, 2012

He sought, therefore, both to disarm them politically and to anglicize them socially, by amalgamating their political system with that of wholly British Upper Canada.

From The Framework of Home Rule by Erskine Childers

In 1812, a year of dramatic battles in North America, Europe and Russia, some Russians founded a Sonoma County outpost called Fort Ross, probably an Anglicized mangling of the word “Russ,” for Russia.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 1, 2025

Those of you who enjoy a bit of English literature might recognize Tokaji under its Anglicized name, tokay, which aristocrats like to swizzle in period romances and gaslit murder mysteries.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 23, 2023

His father, Clarence Rufus Rorem — the family name was an Anglicized version of the Norwegian Rorhjem — was a medical economist who taught at Earlham College in Richmond.

From New York Times ● Nov. 18, 2022

I always felt protected from antisemitism by my Anglicized surname and my Whiteness.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 3, 2022

It’s time to admit that data has joined agenda, erotica, insignia, opera, stamina, and other technically plural Latin and Greek words that have become thoroughly Anglicized as singular nouns taking singular verbs.

From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner

Des and Devi also discuss Anglicizing Indian names.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2022

To the irritation of his publishers, he sometimes resorts to footnotes to explain unfamiliar terms or episodes from Chinese history, rather than omitting or Anglicizing them.

From New York Times ● Dec. 3, 2019

On the one hand, it has made the Anglicizing of international communications ever more unstoppable.

From The New Yorker ● Oct. 24, 2016

Anglicizing the French name to Dolphin, Stallworth broke with his slave past and set the stage, more than 100 years later, for the Dolphin name to appear in lights in Hollywood.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2015

Sy Rapid progress made in Anglicizing previous to passing of Quebec Act, 63; unfortunate change of policy regarding, 64.

From The Makers of Canada: Index and Dictionary of Canadian History by Various