From the election of Zohran Mamdani to the intrigue surrounding the jewel heist at the Louvre, keeping up with this year’s news also left some Americans struggling with pronunciations.
According to Associated Press, that has put both the name of New York City’s incoming mayor and the famed Paris museum on a list of the most mispronounced words in 2025.
The language-learning company Babbel and closed-captioning company The Captioning Group on Thursday released a list of the words that news anchors, politicians and other public figures in the US struggled with the most this year, giving an overview of the people and topics that had Americans talking.
As Mamdani made his political rise, the democratic socialist’s name often was mangled. When he takes office in January, the 34-year-old will become the city’s first Muslim mayor, first born in Africa and first of South Asian heritage.
Babbel said his namem, which should be pronounced zoh-RAHN mam-DAH-nee, was most commonly mispronounced when people swapped the “M” and “N” in his last name.
Mamdani has said he doesn’t mind if someone tries to pronounce his name correctly and misses but that some mispronounce it intentionally. During one mayoral race debate, he chided former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pronunciation of his name, telling his opponent: “The name is Mamdani. M-A-M-D-A-N-I.”
The theft of France’s crown jewels from the Louvre in October had many people mispronouncing the name of the world’s most-visited museum. Babbel says the correct pronunciation is LOOV-ruh, with a very soft pronunciation on the “ruh,” which can be a challenge for English speakers.
