Kamala Harris | Photo Credit: Key AP Highlights The year 2020 is drawing to a close and all kinds of checklists are being implemented. Here’s one that will make you laugh. Guess what the most mispronounced names of the year were. Are some names super easy for us Indians? There are others that anyone can pass. What’s in a name, can you tell? Well, quite a few things. You get someone’s correct name, good for you. If you do it wrong, it becomes embarrassing for both parties. Do you remember that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, mispronounced the name of a famous national park (Yosemite) that Americans are proud of? He pronounced mite like in power instead of mighty. He also got the wrong name Kamala Harris and worked on it, giving good fodder for memes. In fact, several Republican members could not say that Kamala was right. The year 2020 had two great events. One is the horrible COVID-19 pandemic that swept across the world. The other is the most debated election in recent times: the 2020 US presidential race. The pandemic put America’s leading infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, at the forefront. The country’s vice president-elect, Kamala Harris was also the subject of discussion. Now, on a list of the most mispronounced names of 2020 compiled by the US Captioning Company, which captioned and captioned events in real time on television and in court, the two join the august company of Renaissance master Leonardo. da Vinci. The list released Wednesday identifies the words that were found to be the most challenging for news readers and people on television to pronounce this year. The captioning company said it surveyed its members to generate the list, which is now in its fifth year and commissioned by Babbel, a language learning apps company headquartered in Berlin and New York. In 2016, the top 10 included words like Narcos, Bowie, Zika, and Quinoa. In 2017, it was Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Pyongyang, etc. Todd Ehresmann, a senior linguist at Babbel, said the list for 2020, unsurprisingly, reflects a year dominated by presidential politics and the coronavirus pandemic. “All of these have added some new phrases to our national vocabulary, which may take some practice,” he said. Here’s how to pronounce commonly mispronounced words: Anthony Fauci (AN-thon-nee FOW-chee): Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Bangtan Sonyeondan (PUNG-tahn SOH-nyun-dahn): the full name of the South Korean K-Pop band ‘BTS’, which translates to “a bulletproof boy group” or “boy scouts to Bullet proof”. Giannis Antetokounmpo (YON-nis AHN-de-doh-KOON-boh): A Greek basketball player who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks and was named the ‘Most Valuable Player’ in the NBA this year. Isaias (ees-ah-EE-ahs): The name given to a powerful hurricane that this summer caused significant damage to the east coast and the Caribbean. Kamala Harris: Vice President-elect. We in India don’t need help with the pronunciation of this name. For those outside of our purview, the Associated Press has reported that Harris’s name is pronounced “KAH’-mah-lah” or, as he explains in his biography, “‘comma-la’, like the punctuation mark.” Leonardo da Vinci (lee-oh-NAR-doe dah-VIN-chee): the Italian painter, architect and engineer who created the ‘Mona Lisa’. A mispronunciation of his name was the subject of a viral meme on social media this year. Mahamayavi Bhagavan Antle (mu-HAH-muh-yaw-vee bag-AH-wahn ANT-uhl) – This name is child’s play for most Indians. This is the full name of the wildlife park operator ‘Doc’ Antle, who rose to fame in the Netflix documentary series ‘Tiger King’. Nevada (nev-ADD-ah): Las Vegas family home that played a central role in the presidential election. Yosemite – The famous national park in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, was notably mispronounced by President Trump in August. Various sources list its pronunciation as (yoh-SEM-it-ee). X Æ A-Xii (EX-aye-eye): the name given by business magnate Elon Musk and his Canadian girlfriend (also a musician) Grimes to their first child born in May 2020. The pronunciation is according to Grimes, whose Tweet tell you where you got it from. Simple, isn’t it? Good! Good!! Good!!!