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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

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Etymology

Origin of Anglicize

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

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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

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 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

V. coin words, coin a term; backform; Americanize, Anglicize.

From Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases by Peter Mark Roget

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

Jimmy was commissioned to anglicize a proper proposal and André spent hours in repeating the verbiage as taught.

From David Lannarck, Midget An Adventure Story by George S. Harney

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

Butoh is an Anglicized version of “buto,” derived from “ankoku buto,” which translates to “dance of darkness.”

From New York Times ● Apr. 15, 2024

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

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

And, unlike earlier generations, Indian American candidates are running without Anglicizing their names.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2024

Des and Devi also discuss Anglicizing Indian names.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2022

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

From The New Yorker ● Oct. 24, 2016

In June 2010, only about a half dozen of 500 applications for name changes in New York appeared to be Anglicizing their names, according to a New York Times analysis.

From New York Times ● Mar. 2, 2016

He cannot speak a word of pure French; and of all Anglicizing of the language I have ever heard, his attempts at it are the most droll.

From Recollections of Europe by James Fenimore Cooper

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