DALLAS (AP) — From the election of Zohran Mamdani to the intrigue surrounding the Louvre jewelry heist, the need to keep up with news this year has also left some Americans struggling with pronunciation. This puts the name of the new mayor of New York and the famous Parisian museum on the list of the most mispronounced words in 2025.
Language learning company Babbel and subtitling company The Captioning Group on Thursday released a list of words that news anchors, politicians and other public figures in the U.S. have struggled with the most this year, giving an overview of the people and topics Americans were talking about.
As Mamdani rose politically, the name of the democratic socialist was often misrepresented. When he takes office in January, the 34-year-old will become the first Muslim mayor born in Africa and of South Asian descent. Babbel said his name, which should be pronounced zo-RAN mam-DAH-nee, was most often mispronounced when people swapped the “M” and “N” in his last name.
Mamdani said he doesn't mind if someone tries to pronounce his name correctly and misses, but some people deliberately mispronounce it. During one mayoral debate, he rebuked former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the pronunciation of his name, telling his opponent, “My name is Mamdani. MAMDANI.”
The theft of the French Crown Jewels from the Louvre in October led many people to mispronounce the name of the world's most visited museum. Babbel says the correct pronunciation is LOOV-ruh, with the pronunciation of “ruh” being very soft, which can be a challenge for English speakers.
“Many of these words come from different languages, and so we have to adapt to a sound that we have never made before,” said Esteban Tuma, a linguist and cultural expert at Babbel.
Other words and names in the list include:
— Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is pronounced “uh-LOOK-tuh-MIH-nuh-fen.” President Donald Trump gave comedians plenty of material when he tripped over the word, imploring pregnant women to avoid taking the painkiller despite inconclusive evidence about whether too much might be linked to autism.
— Alex Murdaugh, a prominent South Carolina lawyer sentenced to life in prison for killing his wife and son in 2021, has been declared AL-ick MUR-dock. The case was dramatized in a series on Hulu this year.
— Mujaro, pronounced koso-JAHR-OH, is part of a wave of diabetes and obesity drugs that have soared in popularity as people lost weight by taking the injections.
Several words from the US list, including Louvre and Mujaro, also made the UK list compiled by Babbel and the British Institute of Stenographic Reporters, an organization dedicated to professional subtitling. Storm Éowyn, which hit Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland in January, added the name to the UK list. Babbel says the correct pronunciation is “ay-OH-win,” pronounced with a three-beat rhythm.
Over the course of the year, subtitlers mark words that appear again and again as difficult to pronounce and spell, or that appear recently. Babbel linguists are also tracking new pronunciation problems they encounter.
The surprise of the year was actor Denzel Washington telling late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel that he was named after his father and their names are actually pronounced DEN-zul. But he said it was confusing, so his mother decided to pronounce her son's name Den-ZELLE.
