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.
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
In Canada the French of Ontario province made vigorous protest against efforts to Anglicize them.
From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21 The Recent Days (1910-1914) by Horne, Charles F. (Charles Francis)
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 Childers, Erskine
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
I always felt protected from antisemitism by my Anglicized surname and my Whiteness.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 3, 2022
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
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
And, unlike earlier generations, Indian American candidates are running without Anglicizing their names.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2024
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.
