New York
Why Can’t People Pronounce ‘Zohran Mamdani’?
It was more than an hour into last week’s critical three-way debate for mayor of New York City, and somehow, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had yet to say the name of the race’s front-runner.
He called him “the assemblyman” and a miniature version of former Mayor Bill de Blasio. But he shied away from saying a name that he had repeatedly butchered on the campaign trail.
“Mr. Mandani”
Andrew Cuomo in a campaign video.
And on the debate stage.
Andrew Cuomo during a Democratic primary debate in June.
“Mr. Mandami”
His pronunciation was so notably off that, during a Democratic primary debate in June, the assemblyman himself, Zohran Mamdani, called him out on it.
Zohran Mamdani during the same debate.
“M–A–M–D–A–N–I”
Mr. Cuomo is not alone.
For various reasons, legitimate and perhaps otherwise, Mr. Mamdani’s first and last name have become the subject of rather adventurous, even creative, displays of linguistic fumbling.
Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, struggled with his name at the first debate of the general election last week, calling him “Zor-han.”
Curtis Sliwa in the first general election debate.
“Zorhan Mandami”
Letitia James, the New York state attorney general and a key political ally, botched his name at a major campaign rally in Washington Heights this month, enthusiastically shouting “Mandami” as he came onstage.
Letitia James at a Mamdani campaign rally.
“Zohran Mandami”
For Mr. Mamdani, having his name botched is not new. He said in an interview that mispronunciations were common growing up as an immigrant in Manhattan.
“It happened quite a lot,” he said. “But frankly, I don’t begrudge anyone who tries and gets it wrong. The effort means everything to me.”
Asked about any mnemonic tricks he recommends to help people pronounce it, Mr. Mamdani laughed.
“It’s pretty phonetic honestly,” he said.
“Zohran Mamdani”
Zohran Mamdani at a debate during the primary.
Mr. Mamdani, who is running to become the city’s first Muslim mayor, said that some people like Mr. Cuomo were intentionally mispronouncing his name or refusing to make an effort to say it correctly.
“Those who go out of their way to mispronounce it — that’s not a mistake, that’s a message,” he said.
His supporters have embraced the issue as a rallying cry against Mr. Cuomo, turning the audio clip of Mr. Mamdani correcting him into a viral song online. Mr. Mamdani also said that his mother has started to sign emails with “Momdani” — a nod to her pride in being his mother that might also help with the pronunciation.
Mr. de Blasio, the former mayor, is another Mamdani ally who admitted that he had stumbled over his name.
“Zorhan Mamdani”
“I think I’m in the ballpark now, but it did take me a while,” Mr. de Blasio said, adding: “I think it’s just to the American English ear, the construct is a little counterintuitive. It takes some practice to get the cadence of it right.”
Mr. Sliwa said in an interview that he was trying to do better: “It’ll take time. It’s not intentional.”
Mr. Sliwa, whose last name is pronounced SLEE-WUH, said he understood Mr. Mamdani’s pain.
“Out of 46 years that I’ve been the guy who founded the Guardian Angels, I’d say about 33 years of that time, my name was constantly mispronounced,” he said. “I don’t take offense to it.”
President Trump’s failed efforts to say Mr. Mamdani’s name might be viewed less benevolently, since the president has repeatedly attacked the candidate and threatened to arrest him.
President Donald J. Trump speaking to reporters on Air Force One this week.
“Mandami”
His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, used an even more outlandish pronunciation, merging parts of his first and last name.
Karoline Leavitt at a press briefing in July.
“Zamdami”
While some pronunciation mistakes might be deliberate, several linguistics experts told The New York Times that both Mr. Mamdani’s first and last name feature letter arrangements and vowel sounds that are not common in English, and it was not a surprise that some people struggled with them.
“Languages differ from one another as to what sequences of sounds are frequent, or even possible to pronounce, and they also differ as to what spellings or letters are associated with what pronunciations,” said Gillian Gallagher, a professor of linguistics at New York University.
There are hundreds more words in English with the sequence “nd” than with “md,” Ms. Gallagher said, adding that these clusters of consonants can lead to speech processes that result in mistakes. One, known as assimilation, involves morphing the second “M” in Mr. Mamdani’s last name into an “N,” making it sound like “Mandani.”
Another, known as substitution, leads speakers to replace the “N” in Mamdani with another “M.”
Whoopi Goldberg, the television host, on “The View.”
“Zohran Mamdami”
Those patterns of speech can be difficult to avoid.
“Mamdani has an ‘M’ next to a ‘D’, and that’s hard for English speakers,” said Professor Laurel MacKenzie, a co-director of the NYU Sociolinguistics Lab.
“Our tongues are just not used to making that specific sequence of sounds.”
The softer “Ahn” sound in both Mr. Mamdani’s first and last name can also be challenging. Frequently, “Zohran” has been pronounced with a screeching “Zohr-ANNE.” That miscue is the result of vowels being pronounced differently in Americanized English, said Suzanne van der Feest, an associate research professor at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.
Carl Heastie, speaker of the New York State Assembly, at an event where he endorsed Mr. Mamdani.
“Zohr–ANNE”
“That is somebody who speaks mainly English and is just making it into American English vowels,” Ms. van der Feest said.
“It’s an example of how spelling is interfering with how someone’s name is pronounced.”
John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union, said his pronunciation of Mr. Mamdani’s first name feels like a “very common outer-borough way of pronouncing Zohran.” He also noted that he avoids saying Mr. Mamdani’s last name, because “I’m afraid I’m going to mess it up.”
John Samuelsen at a Mamdani campaign rally.
“Zohr–ANNE”
Mr. Mamdani said he once visited a mosque in Manhattan for Friday prayers during the campaign and asked the group to raise their hand if they had ever heard someone consistently mispronounce their name. Most people in the room raised their hands.
“It’s something countless immigrants have experienced,” he said. “When people mock or intentionally distort someone’s name, it’s a way of saying someone doesn’t belong here.”
Mr. Mamdani said he took pride in his name. His mother picked his first name, which means “the first star in the sky.” His father picked his middle name, Kwame, to honor Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, who fought for independence.
“Andrew Cuomo never struggles with names like John Catsimatidis,” Mr. Mamdani said in reference to the Greek billionaire grocer. “But somehow Mamdani is too difficult. It’s an issue of prejudice.”
Others have expressed frustration over Mr. Cuomo’s errors, including the journalist Anand Giridharadas, who corrected Mr. Cuomo on MSNBC this week: “This is a very big, diverse city you want to lead. We should get the names right.”
Mr. Cuomo sometimes gets it right.
Andrew Cuomo in a video posted to his campaign’s TikTok account.
“Zohran Mamdani”
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said that the former governor’s name was often botched, too. Indeed, Como, like the Italian lake, is a common mispronunciation for Cuomo, which is pronounced KWO-MO.
“It’s unintentional and he should get over it — people mangle ‘Cuomo’ all the time and you don’t hear us whine about it,” Mr. Azzopardi said.
Ms. MacKenzie and others were quick to note, though, that pronouncing difficult names correctly is not an insurmountable challenge. Practice and a concerted effort to ask people how they pronounce their names helps. That’s particularly the case in New York City, with such a rich array of immigrant communities from across the world.
“We all learned how to say ‘Daenerys Targaryen’ when we were all into ‘Game of Thrones,’” Ms. MacKenzie said.
“We can learn hard names. We can do it. We can figure out how the spellings map to the sounds. We can all get there. We just have to practice.”
Every week since 1976, Metropolitan Diary has published stories by, and for, New Yorkers of all ages and eras (no matter where they live now): anecdotes and memories, quirky encounters and overheard snippets that reveal the city’s spirit and heart.
For the past four years, we’ve asked for your help picking the best Diary entry of the year. Now we’re asking again.
We’ve narrowed the field to the five finalists here. Read them and vote for your favorite. The author of the item that gets the most votes will receive a print of the illustration that accompanied it, signed by the artist, Agnes Lee.
The voting closes at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 21. You can change your vote as many times as you’d like until then, but you may only pick one. Choose wisely.
Click “VOTE” to choose your favorite Metropolitan Diary entry of 2025, and come back on Sunday, Dec. 28, to see which one our readers picked as their favorite.
Click “VOTE” to choose your favorite Metropolitan Diary entry of 2025, and come back on Sunday, Dec. 28, to see which one our readers picked as their favorite.
Two Stops
Dear Diary:
It was a drizzly June night in 2001. I was a young magazine editor and had just enjoyed what I thought was a very blissful second date — dinner, drinks, fabulous conversation — with our technology consultant at a restaurant in Manhattan.
I lived in Williamsburg at the time, and my date lived near Murray Hill, so we grabbed a cab and headed south on Second Avenue.
“Just let me out here,” my date said to the cabby at the corner of 25th Street.
We said our goodbyes, quick and shy, knowing that we would see each other at work the next day. I was giddy and probably grinning with happiness and hope.
“Oh boy,” the cabby said, shaking his head as we drove toward Brooklyn. “Very bad.”
“What do you mean?” I asked in horror.
“He doesn’t want you to know exactly where he lives,” the cabby said. “Not a good sign.”
I spent the rest of the cab ride in shock, revisiting every moment of the date.
Happily, it turned out that my instinct about it being a great date was right, and the cabby was wrong. Twenty-four years later, my date that night is my husband, and I know that if your stop is first, it’s polite to get out so the cab can continue in a straight line to the next stop.
Ferry Farewell
Dear Diary:
On a February afternoon, I met my cousins at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Their spouses and several of our very-grown children were there too. I brought Prosecco, a candle, a small speaker to play music, photos and a poem.
We were there to recreate the wedding cruise of my mother, Monica, and my stepfather, Peter. They had gotten married at City Hall in August 1984. She was 61, and he, 71. It was her first marriage, and his fourth.
I was my mother’s witness that day. It was a late-in-life love story, and they were very happy. Peter died in 1996, at 82. My mother died last year. She was 100.
Peter’s ashes had waited a long time, but finally they were mingled with Monica’s. The two of them would ride the ferry a last time and then swirl together in the harbor forever. Cue the candles, bubbly, bagpipes and poems.
Two ferry workers approached us. We knew we were in trouble: Open containers and open flames were not allowed on the ferry.
My cousin’s husband, whispering, told the workers what we were doing and said we would be finished soon.
They walked off, and then returned. They said they had spoken to the captain, and they ushered us to the stern for some privacy. As the cup of ashes flew into the water, the ferry horn sounded two long blasts.
Unacceptable
Dear Diary:
I went to a new bagel store in Brooklyn Heights with my son.
When it was my turn to order, I asked for a cinnamon raisin bagel with whitefish salad and a slice of red onion.
The man behind the counter looked up at me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that.”
Teresa
Dear Diary:
It was February 2013. With a foot of snow expected, I left work early and drove from New Jersey warily as my wipers squeaked and snow and ice stuck to my windows.
I drove east on the Cross Bronx Expressway, which was tied up worse than usual. Trucks groaned on either side of my rattling Toyota. My fingers were cold. My toes were colder. Got to get home before it really comes down, I thought to myself.
By the time I got home to my little red bungalow a stone’s throw from the Throgs Neck Bridge, the snow was already up to my ankles.
Inside, I took off my gloves, hat, scarf, coat, sweater, pants and snow boots. The bed, still unmade, was inviting me. But first, I checked my messages.
There was one from Teresa, the 92-year-old widow on the corner.
“Call me,” she said, sounding desperate.
I looked toward the warm bed, but … Teresa. There was a storm outside, and she was alone.
On went the pants, the sweater, the coat, the scarf, the boots and the gloves, and then I went out the door.
The snow was six inches deep on the sidewalks, so I tottered on tire tracks in the middle of the street. The wind stung my face. When I got to the end of the block, I pounded on her door.
“Teresa!” I called. No answer. “Teresa!” I called again. I heard the TV blaring. Was she sprawled on the floor?
I went next door and called for Kathy.
“Teresa can’t answer the door,” I said. “Probably fell.”
Kathy had a key. In the corner of her neat living room, Teresa, in pink sweatpants and sweaters, was sitting curled in her armchair, head bent down and The Daily News in her lap.
I snapped off the TV.
Startled, she looked up.
“Kathy! Neal!” she said. “What’s a five-letter word for cabbage?”
Nice Place
Dear Diary:
When I lived in Park Slope over 20 years ago, I once had to call an ambulance because of a sudden, violent case of food poisoning.
Two paramedics, a man and a woman, entered our third-floor walk-up with a portable chair. Strapping me in, the male medic quickly inserted an IV line into my arm.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his partner circling around and admiring the apartment.
“Nice place you’ve got here.” she said. “Do you own it?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, all but unconscious.
Once I was in the ambulance, she returned to her line of inquiry.
“Do you mind me asking how much you paid for your apartment?”
“$155,000,” I croaked.
“Wow! You must have bought during the recession.”
“Yeah” I said.
They dropped me off at Methodist Hospital, where I was tended to by a nurse as I struggled to stay lucid.
At some point, the same medic poked her head into the room with one last question:
“You wouldn’t be wanting to sell any time soon, would you?”
Illustrations by Agnes Lee.
‘Part of the job’
Edwin Guity was at the controls of a southbound D train last December, rolling through the Bronx, when suddenly someone was on the tracks in front of him.
He jammed on the emergency brake, but it was too late. The man had gone under the wheels.
Stumbling over words, Mr. Guity radioed the dispatcher and then did what the rules require of every train operator involved in such an incident. He got out of the cab and went looking for the person he had struck.
“I didn’t want to do it,” Mr. Guity said later. “But this is a part of the job.”
He found the man pinned beneath the third car. Paramedics pulled him out, but the man died at the hospital. After that, Mr. Guity wrestled with what to do next.
A 32-year-old who had once lived in a family shelter with his parents, he viewed the job as paying well and offering a rare chance at upward mobility. It also helped cover the costs of his family’s groceries and rent in the three-bedroom apartment they shared in Brooklyn.
But striking the man with the train had shaken him more than perhaps any other experience in his life, and the idea of returning to work left him feeling paralyzed.
Edwin Guity was prescribed exposure therapy after his train struck a man on the tracks.
Hundreds of train operators have found themselves in Mr. Guity’s position over the years.
And for just as long, there has been a path through the state workers’ compensation program to receiving substantive treatment to help them cope. But New York’s train operators say that their employer, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has done too little to make them aware of that option.
After Mr. Guity’s incident, no official told him of that type of assistance, he said. Instead, they gave him the option of going back to work right away.
But Mr. Guity was lucky. He had a friend who had been through the same experience and who coached him on getting help — first through a six-week program and then, with the assistance of a lawyer, through an experienced specialist.
The specialist prescribed a six-month exposure therapy program to gradually reintroduce Mr. Guity to the subway.
His first day back at the controls of a passenger train was on Thanksgiving. Once again, he was driving on the D line — the same route he had been traveling on the day of the fatal accident.
M.T.A. representatives insisted that New York train operators involved in strikes are made aware of all options for getting treatment, but they declined to answer specific questions about how the agency ensures that drivers get the help they need.
In an interview, the president of the M.T.A. division that runs the subway, Demetrius Crichlow, said all train operators are fully briefed on the resources available to them during their job orientation.
“I really have faith in our process,” Mr. Crichlow said.
Still, other transit systems — all of which are smaller than New York’s — appear to do a better job of ensuring that operators like Mr. Guity take advantage of the services available to them, according to records and interviews.
A Times analysis shows that the incidents were on the rise in New York City’s system even as they were falling in all other American transit systems.
An Uptick in Subway Strikes
San Francisco’s system provides 24-hour access to licensed therapists through a third-party provider.
Los Angeles proactively reaches out to its operators on a regular basis to remind them of workers’ compensation options and other resources.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has made it a goal to increase engagement with its employee assistance program.
The M.T.A. says it offers some version of most of these services.
But in interviews with more than two dozen subway operators who have been involved in train strikes, only one said he was aware of all those resources, and state records suggest most drivers of trains that strike people are not taking full advantage of them.
“It’s the M.T.A.’s responsibility to assist the employee both mentally and physically after these horrific events occur,” the president of the union that represents New York City transit workers, John V. Chiarello, said in a statement, “but it is a constant struggle trying to get the M.T.A. to do the right thing.”
new video loaded: Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid
transcript
transcript
Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid
Nearly 200 protesters tried to block federal agents from leaving a parking garage in Lower Manhattan on Saturday. The confrontation appeared to prevent a possible ICE raid nearby, and led to violent clashes between the police and protesters.
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[chanting] “ICE out of New York.”
By Jorge Mitssunaga
November 30, 2025
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