1700–10; < Medieval Latin Anglic ( us ) English + -ize
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."
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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 Roget, Peter Mark
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
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
Attusah could not at once anglicize the name "Chochoola," but after so long a time MacVintie was enabled to identify the Fox, then a noted British man-of-war.
From The Frontiersmen by Murfree, Mary Noailles
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
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
And in modern times, it’s more likely that a word will retain its original spelling and pronunciation, whereas in the last century, there was a tendency for those words to be Anglicized.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 7, 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
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
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
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
