diff --git a/icu4c/source/common/resbund.cpp b/icu4c/source/common/resbund.cpp
index 2e0ee8cf414..f3a38ed35d6 100644
--- a/icu4c/source/common/resbund.cpp
+++ b/icu4c/source/common/resbund.cpp
@@ -269,7 +269,7 @@ ResourceBundle::constructForLocale(const UnicodeString& path,
 {
     char name[300];
 
-    if(!path.empty()) {
+    if(!path.isEmpty()) {
         path.extract(name, sizeof(name), 0, error);
         resource = ures_open(name, locale.getName(), &error);
     } else {
diff --git a/icu4c/source/test/intltest/ustrtest.cpp b/icu4c/source/test/intltest/ustrtest.cpp
index a919a3a7278..c48dbabf55a 100644
--- a/icu4c/source/test/intltest/ustrtest.cpp
+++ b/icu4c/source/test/intltest/ustrtest.cpp
@@ -1165,7 +1165,7 @@ void UnicodeStringTest::TestUnescape(void) {
     }
 
     // test that an empty string is returned in case of an error
-    if (!UNICODE_STRING("wrong \\u sequence", 17).unescape().empty()) {
+    if (!UNICODE_STRING("wrong \\u sequence", 17).unescape().isEmpty()) {
         errln("FAIL: unescaping of a string with an illegal escape sequence did not return an empty string");
     }
 }