From the rise of Zohran Mamdani to the jewel heist at the Louvre, some of 2025’s biggest news moments left many Americans wrestling with pronunciations. A new list released by language-learning platform Babbel and closed-captioning company The Captioning Group highlights the words, names and places most commonly mispronounced by public figures in the US this year. Mamdani — New York City’s mayor-elect and a democratic socialist — topped the list. At 34, he is set to become the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first born in Africa and the first of South Asian heritage. His name, correctly pronounced zoh-RAHN mam-DAH-nee, was often fumbled, with many people inadvertently swapping the “M” and “N” in his surname. Mamdani has said he doesn’t mind well-intentioned errors, but has called out deliberate mispronunciations — even correcting former governor Andrew Cuomo during a debate: “The name is Mamdani. M-A-M-D-A-N-I.” The dramatic October theft of France’s crown jewels from the Louvre museum also triggered a wave of pronunciation mishaps. Babbel notes that the world-famous museum’s name should be said as LOOV-ruh, …