Anglicization of Urdu Proper Names: A Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the impact of English on Pakistani names making them Anglicized. The local names are abbreviated in order to look modern or to show prestige on the part of the users. This phenomenon presents a discrete variety of Pakistani English (PE). The researcher conducted a corpus-based analysis (The Newspaper Analysis of 'The News', September 2017) to show the frequency of the Anglicized names. For the data analysis, the AntConc 3.2.1 was used to handle the corpus. The data were presented in the form of tables to show their frequency and percentage. The study proved that such Anglicized names in the abbreviated forms had their role in creating a new variety of Pakistani English. The results were generalized with reference to the understandability and habitual usage of such abbreviations.