diff --git a/Lib/email/charset.py b/Lib/email/charset.py
index 9bebf6f..ad56c58 100644
--- a/Lib/email/charset.py
+++ b/Lib/email/charset.py
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@
     'add_codec',
     ]
 
+import codecs
 import email.base64mime
 import email.quoprimime
 
@@ -209,7 +210,12 @@
         except UnicodeError:
             raise errors.CharsetError(input_charset)
         input_charset = input_charset.lower()
-        # Set the input charset after filtering through the aliases
+        # Set the input charset after filtering through the aliases and/or codecs
+        if not (input_charset in ALIASES or input_charset in CHARSETS):
+            try:
+                input_charset = codecs.lookup(input_charset).name
+            except LookupError:
+                pass
         self.input_charset = ALIASES.get(input_charset, input_charset)
         # We can try to guess which encoding and conversion to use by the
         # charset_map dictionary.  Try that first, but let the user override
diff --git a/Lib/email/test/test_email.py b/Lib/email/test/test_email.py
index 94eec86..4ce9848 100644
--- a/Lib/email/test/test_email.py
+++ b/Lib/email/test/test_email.py
@@ -2868,6 +2868,9 @@
         self.assertEqual(str(charset), 'us-ascii')
         self.assertRaises(Errors.CharsetError, Charset, 'asc\xffii')
 
+    def test_codecs_aliases_accepted(self):
+        charset = Charset('utf8')
+        self.assertEqual(str(charset), 'utf-8')
 
 
 # Test multilingual MIME headers.
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 0af2157..f82f048 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -46,6 +46,9 @@
 Library
 -------
 
+- Issue #4487: email now accepts as charset aliases all codec aliases
+  accepted by the codecs module.
+
 - Issue #6470: Drop UNC prefix in FixTk.
 
 - Issue #5610: feedparser no longer eats extra characters at the end of