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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

One director told her to Anglicize her name so that it would be easier to remember, but the “Star Wars” and Marvel star rejected his suggestion.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 30, 2023

Usoltsev did not address concerns about the alleged tendency of the app to Anglicize results and referred The Washington Post to an FAQ on the Prisma Labs website.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 8, 2022

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 longstanding drive by the British conquerors of Quebec and their descendants to Anglicize the names of streets and bridges in the city.

From New York Times ● Aug. 10, 2020

The Dutch peasants along the countryside were inflamed by hearing that their gallant leader desired to Anglicize the country.

From Native Life in South Africa by Sol (Solomon Tshekisho) Plaatje

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

Not too long ago, it was taken for granted that some immigrants to the United States should anglicize their names.

From Slate ● Mar. 24, 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

As Aurora--it sounds so much pleasanter to anglicize her name--as Aurora gained a corner where two of these gunwales met, she stopped and looked back to make sure that Clotilde was not watching her.

From The Grandissimes by George Washington Cable

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

Tourists from Phoenix, who make up the bulk of visitors, call it by its Anglicized name, Rocky Point; its unofficial moniker is Arizona’s beach.

From New York Times ● Jun. 10, 2023

This practice goes back even further: After British colonial forces left India in the late 1940s, right-wing Hindu nationalist leaders replaced many Anglicized place names with Hindu ones.

From Salon ● Oct. 15, 2022

The original plural was octopodes, Anglicized over the years to octopuses.

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

I don't at all expect to be dull; and it evidently wouldn't do to thrust him straight into English life yet—he wants Anglicizing gradually.

From Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge Extracted From His Letters And Diaries, With Reminiscences Of His Conversation By His Friend Christopher Carr Of The Same College by Arthur Christopher Benson