White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was called out online this week after she markedly mispronounced the last name of Democratic New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani.
During a White House briefing on Thursday, Leavitt was asked by a reporter why President Donald Trump said he won’t be getting involved in the New York City mayoral race. The press secretary said that Trump “reserves the right to get involved in races, or not get involved in races” before she leveled attacks at Mamdani, while appearing to pronounce his name “Zamdami.”
“Although [Trump] has gone as far as to say he absolutely does not want to see Zamdami elected — who is a known communist, who supports the abolishment of private property, the defunding of police,” she said.
Mamdani, a self-described Democratic socialist, responded to a clip of Leavitt botching his name at the briefing in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday.
Bryan Metzger, a senior politics reporter at Business Insider, had pointed out the mispronunciation in a post on X, writing: “The latest in the Zohran Mamdani mispronunciation saga: White House Press Sec Karoline Leavitt just referred to him as ‘Zamdami’ at her briefing.”
The latest in the Zohran Mamdani mispronunciation saga: White House Press Sec Karoline Leavitt just referred to him as “Zamdami” at her briefing.
— bryan metzger (@metzgov) July 17, 2025
The Democratic mayoral nominee responded to the post by sharing an edited clip taken from his appearance at a primary mayoral debate in June, in which he called out former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for mispronouncing his name during the debate.
“And furthermore, the name is Mamdani, M-a-m-d-a-n-i,” he said on the debate stage at the time. “You should learn how to say it because we gotta get it right.”
In response to a HuffPost inquiry about the mispronunciation and Mamdani’s response, White House assistant press secretary Taylor Rogers shared the following, which includes several inaccuracies about Mamdani’s positions:
“Zohran Mamdani is a communist who supports price controls, defunding the police, abolishing private property, fighting ICE, eliminating prisons, disarming American citizens, higher taxes strictly for white people, and protecting criminal illegal aliens over New York City’s residents.
“The HuffPost should be more concerned with covering the fact that this radical is the new face of the Democrat party.”
Rogers also directed HuffPost to Leavitt’s tweet on Friday in which she once again falsely accused Mamdani of being a communist.
Mamdani was born in Uganda to parents of Indian descent. If elected, he would be the city’s first Muslim mayor. During a sit-down interview with Spectrum News NY1 on Thursday, Mamdani was asked whether he believes mispronunciations of his name are a “calculated act of disrespect.”
“I think there is an element of that, especially when it’s repeated,” he responded.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris similarly dealt with public figures, especially prominent conservatives, repeatedly mispronouncing her first name during her campaign for president last year. Trump, in particular, would often publicly pronounce Harris’ name as “Kuh-MA-luh,” instead of as “comma-la” — as Harris explained it should be pronounced.
A 2022 study from the National Library of Medicine points out that names are a reflection of identity, and that “the chronic mispronunciation of names can undermine one’s identity and be experienced as a microaggression.”
But Deepak Sarma, inaugural distinguished scholar in the public humanities at Case Western Reserve University, told HuffPost that the repeated mispronunciation of names of people of color — especially those with non-Christian names — in the current political landscape is overall “no longer a mere microaggression.”
“The GOP tried this with President Barack Obama and then on countless occasions with Vice President Kamala Harris. The racist intention is, these days, overt, rather than covert,” they said.
“In elite settings, like a White House briefing, mispronunciation signals what is called performative ignorance: an intentional refusal to acknowledge cultural or political legitimacy of a name and the person bearing that name.”
– Ibrahim N. Abusharif, associate professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar
And as it relates to Leavitt’s mispronunciation of Mamdani, Sarma said it is “indeed inappropriate and appalling coming from a White House press secretary.”
“The rules about what is acceptable are changing, and Trump and his MAGA minions revel in this,” they said. “We may be entering a time when such behavior is lauded rather than censured and regarded as an admissible strategy.”
Repeatedly mispronouncing names can “function as symbolic erasure.”
“Consistently mispronouncing names — especially those from non-Western, racialized, or marginalized communities — can function as symbolic erasure,” said Ibrahim N. Abusharif, associate professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar.
“It suggests that the speaker either does not deem the name important enough to learn, or finds it foreign, difficult, or unworthy of effort,” he told HuffPost. “Strategic laziness, in other words.”
And when people, especially those with public platforms, repeatedly mispronounce a person of color’s name, Abusharif said that such a “‘gaffe’ perpetuates a hierarchy in name-making, in which Anglicized or familiar names are ‘normative,’ while others are rendered ‘other.’”
“In elite settings, like a White House briefing, mispronunciation signals what is called performative ignorance: an intentional refusal to acknowledge cultural or political legitimacy of a name and the person bearing that name,” he said.
“It also upholds white normativity in language. The burden of adjustment falls disproportionately on those with ‘unfamiliar’ names, forcing them to accept altered pronunciations or risk invisibility,” he continued.
Sarma said that the White House is “continuing to disseminate the myth that America is a white Christian nation and that non-white, non-Christian, immigrants are not welcome.”
“They are regarded (or to be regarded) as second-class citizens whose names do not even deserve to be pronounced properly,” they continued.
“There’s not a name on earth that is not foreign to somebody,” Abusharif said.
Abusharif emphasized that Mamdani’s name “poses no phonetic challenge to English-language speakers” and that “all the letters and sounds of the name are represented in the English alphabet.”
“So in this case, mispronunciation functions to diminish Mamdani’s identity in a social and political space,” he said.
Regardless, Abusharif pointed out, “there’s not a name on earth that is not foreign to somebody.”
“If we’re going to hide behind the veil of ‘too hard to pronounce,’ names would lose all meaning,” he said.
And at a certain point, Abusharif thinks, it becomes “counter-productive” to correct mispronunciations because “doing so inadvertently acknowledges the difficulty in the pronunciation. Over-correction can confirm biases.”
“Although I was born and raised in Chicago, I do have experience with people mispronouncing my name,” he later added. “And when I notice that they’re not even trying to pronounce it right, I keep my distance.”
Sarma said that they have had mentors and friends shorten their name to “Dee” or “Deep,” or used nicknames like “Puck” with the excuse that their name was “too hard to pronounce.”
“It is never an excuse to allow such renaming, and I regret not asking them to learn how to pronounce mine properly,” they said.
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“It is important for everyone, and especially public figures such as Mamdani, to address these racist behaviors lest they become even more acceptable than they already are,” Sarma continued, before later adding: “America is, and always has been, a country of immigrants. The sooner that all Americans accept this and accept that they, too, are immigrants, the better.”
“To intentionally mispronounce a name is at best childish, and at worst racist,” they said. “Reluctance and obstinance to learn how to say another’s name properly and respectfully will not make America great again but will hasten the disintegration of this once great civilization.”
