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romanize

/ˈɹoʊ.məˌnaɪz/verb

romanize is a verb meaning “To put letters or words written in another writing system into the Latin (Roman) alphabet” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-O-M-A-N-I-Z-E and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 69 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does romanize mean?

verb

  1. 1

    To put letters or words written in another writing system into the Latin (Roman) alphabet.

    The author romanizes Chinese names using the Wade–Giles system rather than the Pinyin system.

  2. 2

    To bring under the authority or influence of Rome.

  3. 3

    To make or become Roman in character or style.

  4. 4

    To make or become Roman Catholic in religion (by conversion), character or style.

  5. 5

    obsoleteTo fill with Latin words or idioms.

verb

as Romanize
  1. 1

    Alternative letter-case form of romanize.

  2. 2

    To Romanianize.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce romanize?

  • UK /ˈɹəʊ.mə.naɪz/
  • US /ˈɹoʊ.məˌnaɪz/

Romanize has 3 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-romanize.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of romanize

  • romanizes present, singular, he/she/it
  • romanizing participle, present
  • romanized participle, past
  • romanise

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is romanize?

Romanize appears about once in every 69 million words in written English, the 262,293rd most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Romanize in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense to put letters or words into the Latin alphabet:

LanguageWords
Frenchlatiniser, romaniser
Germanromanisieren, latinisieren
Portugueseromanizar, latinizar
Spanishlatinizar, romanizar

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does romanize come from?

From Roman + -ize.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).