I am terrible at remembering names. This is bad in itself, but exacerbated by a few factors:
I regularly have lengthy conversations with random strangers, and will be able to easily summarize the conversation afterwords, but will have no recollection of their name.
I am fairly noticeable and memorable, so even people whose names I have no reason to know will know mine.
I am not particularly good with faces either.
This isn’t a memory problem, I can quote back conversations or remember long strings of numbers. I often cope by confessing to my weakness in a self-deprecating manner, or by simply not using names in direct address (it’s generally not necessary in English), but these don’t actually help me learn names. If I remembered to ask their name early on, I sometimes pause mid-conversation to ask “Are you still x?” but that is somewhat awkward and I’m wrong half the time anyway. The only time I can reliably remember is if they share the name of an immediate family member.This is bad enough that I’ll sometimes be five or six classes into the semester and have to check the syllabus to figure out the professor’s name, or will have been in multiple classes with someone and shared several conversations and still not know their name.
When I started running study groups in college, the training included teaching how to learn student’s names. The trick to remembering names is to say the name out loud, with focus on the name and the person at the same time. So, Joachim introduces himself, and you say “Joachim? Nice to meet you, Joachim!” Give the name and face enough time to sink into long term memory. If they don’t introduce themselves, ask them their name, simply apologizing if it turns out you’ve met before.
Then, at the earliest good opportunity, reinforce the name. Using it during the conversation is good. Any time the topic goes in a new direction, or you or your interlocutor have a new idea, you say “So, Joachim, I have another way of looking at that...” or “Joachim, that is an excellent point.” This is totally normal, but might not feel that way to a person who doesn’t use names frequently.
Finally, it is minimally awkward to, at the end of a conversation, say to the person “Well, Joachim, it’s been so good talking to you!” Or, if you’ve totally lost the name, say with a smile “I’ve enjoyed talking with you so much I’ve managed to forget your name!” And they will be quite pleased to remind you.
Not using people’s names is like a microcosm of this thread—if you don’t use the name, rightly or wrongly, you won’t get affirmation or correction.
That all works if you have the capability of recognizing people but just have not practiced it. But you say specifically that you’re not good with faces. A large number of people are partially or completely face-blind. Many (maybe most) don’t realize they have differently functioning brains from the majority of people when it comes to faces. They often recognize people by their distinctive hair color or facial hair, by particularly large or small noses, chins, etc, or even in some cases, by learning the wardrobes of people they are frequently around. I read about one fellow with 4 young children and he is completely unable to tell them apart. So when one jumps in his lap, he hugs them and smiles and says, “So who are you, then?” His kids think it’s a running joke, which is how he treats it, but it’s the only way he’d know who he’s got in his lap.
The point is, if you are not just “bad with faces” but instead face-blind, you may have to use other, more you-specific techniques for identifying people.
It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I first consciously noticed that I was incapable of using other people’s names to their faces. I could do it with immediate family, and I could do it in third person “Howard was telling me...” I have since made strenuous efforts to get better at it, but it is still really psychologically difficult. That’s also when I realized that it was almost impossible for me to leave a message on an answering machine. I’m working on that one too, but doing so is a serious effort. One of my roommates my freshman year of college had the same issues, but neither of us had a clue why.
It might help to find a friend you can practice with, for the names—if the issue applies to IM/Skype/etc. as well, then you can probably find a practice partner or two right here. Otherwise, hopefully you have an in-person friend who you’d trust to explain this to, and who can encourage you to refer to them by name frequently :)
For answering machines, the same friend can probably help, or you could practice on your own answering machine.
I’ve found that, for most skills, doing really impractical-but-safe practice exercises like this actually really pays off. Even if it doesn’t 100% resolve the issue, it still gives you a good foundation to build on, and helps remind you that the activity CAN be safe.
I sometimes have trouble usings people’s names—I think due to fear that I haven’t remembered them correctly, even if I’m 95% certain or more. If I don’t know the person well it may also seem overly familiar.
That does make it difficult to use the techniques I suggested. Some people do not like other people to use their names because they experience it as an attempt to control them emotionally. They feel it invokes automatic parent-child responses that others ought not have access to.
I think the number of these folks is very low (I’ve only met one person who feels this way). But, if he feels that way, it makes sense that there would be people who might be overwhelmed by the emotional burden of invoking such an emotional response. I certainly feel more burdened when I use his name in the first person. I’m not claiming that’s what’s going on with you. But, your description reminded me of this other person, and we can often gain great insight in hearing something even approximately related to our own difficulties.
As for suggestions, I would suggest that a good, small place to start, if you are able, is to repeat a person’s name immediately after they introduce themselves to you, and leave it at that. I suspect it will help cement a few more names than you otherwise would have, and it might have less emotional impact on you to have a formulaic circumstance in which you can think of using another person’s name with them.
I have sometimes contemplated taking out my frustrations by following people around to learn their names, scrounging up any background material on them that I can get, and then pretending to be an old high school acquaintance of theirs, and watching them squirm as they try to remember me.
I’m not entirely certain people aren’t already doing this to me.
In general, I avoid claiming to actually remember people if I don’t, but I’m happy to engage with them as though we were old friends if they are engaging with me that way. If it turns out that we don’t know each other, well, I’ve been friendlier than our relationship obligated me to be, which is not a big problem.
Me too; nothing wrong with it and some people will be positively impressed with how friendly you are even to people you barely know! Also, being straightforward and not embarrassed to ask someone’s name again helps. A simple “I’m sorry, but I’ve completely forgotten your name; could you remind me?” is usually not too awkward unless you’ve met often enough that you should be expected to remember.
(Also, I am in DC, which is a very business card-exchanging area; remembering getting the card and seeing the name after being introduced is very helpful.)
I’ve started some great friendships by doing just this. Don’t just pretend to run into an acquaintance. Pretend that you just ran into your old best friend X (X is totally awesome BTW, it’s been way too long since you’ve seen them, and OMG do you remember when X did Y? It was so cool).
Requirements: an upstanding and respected mutual friend, an endorsement that a prank will be well received, and a victim with a sense of humor.
At the beginning of 2010 I made it my mission to remember the names of everyone I was introduced to. I haven’t quite managed everyone, but I’ve gotten pretty close.
My technique: when someone tells me their name, I think of something that rhymes with it, and imagine the person in conjunction with the rhyme. I have a general policy of picking the first thing that comes to mind, since that presumably suggests my brain already has some sort of reliable connection between them.
For example, when meeting Sam for the first time, I will think of the first rhyme for ‘Sam’ that comes to mind, which in the case of a recent Sam was ‘ham’. I imagine Sam holding some ham, with a big grin on her face (she has quite a striking grin anyway, so this detail just sort of cements it in place). When I next meet Sam, I will have a striking image of her holding some ham with a big grin on her face, which I can then follow back to her name.
Over the past year or so I’ve built up quite a menagerie of associations. All people called Sue are now in a large group of Blue Sues in my head. Anyone called Vicky is covered in something sticky. Anyone called Kate has an expression of hate.
Sometimes I have to reach for tenuous rhymes. ‘David’ was a bit of a tricky one, but I eventually settled on ‘shavéd’, and imagine Davids to have a partially-shaved scalp. If anything, the more tenuous rhymes are more memorable, because I also have the memory of the difficult rhyme to hang the name off.
This does occasionally create some odd effects. Last September, for example, I know I met two people called Amanda, but can only remember one of them. The act of remembering their name has persisted in memory, but actually meeting them hasn’t.
The most important aspect isn’t the actual technique (as there are plenty of other name-remembering techniques out there which presumably work fairly well), but getting into the habit of using it. It doesn’t do any good just knowing it; you have to consciously choose to apply it whenever you’re told a name you want to remember, and that’s a much harder habit to get into than you’d think.
It’s also a good technique for remembering things in general. I remembered the term ‘homonymous hemianopia’ recently by imagining Hermione from Harry Potter smoking opium and losing half of her field of vision.
I don’t understand the final example though. Is the memory device just to help you remember some of the letters in the name and the symptom or is there some connection my brain doesn’t make that yours does? HoMoNymous—HerMioNe, HemiAn—HArry, OPIa—OPIum?
The word “homonymous” takes care of itself in my case, since it’s a word I’m familiar with already. The “hermianopia” bit is a not-quite-portmanteau of “hermione” and “opium”.
I remember names after I’ve seen them written in association with the face. I remember unusual names better, because I can ask the person then and there how to spell it. So for anyone with whom I speak rarely, I basically only consistently remember the names of facebook friends.
Method: Add people on facebook immediately after meeting them. Then review the RSVP list before going to any events with an events page!
I had this problem for a long time, which can be embarrassing doing phone support, especially one with frequent callers that know my name and voice (one of only two men and we have distinct voices and greetings). I started intentionally using callers name’s three times in every call and reaped several benefits: 1) I actually remember their names when they call back, 2) I’m better at remembering names having been told only once (even outside of work), and 3) my customer satisfaction scores had a marked and sustained increase.
I’m also normally terrible at learning names, but I’ve learned how to get around it. This may be terribly specific to people who learn like me; if so, I apologize.
I have found that I am incredibly focused on learning through actually seeing things written. I am excellent at spelling because I see the written form of words in my head, and even when I can’t immediately recall the precise letters, I always have an accurate sense of how many there are (which is often enough to select the correct spelling from a shortlist of plausible alternatives).
Given that, I find that I can trivially remember people’s names after having emailed them and typed their names.
Yes, if I have emailed someone and typed their name, I will remember it. My problem is that generally I have no reason or means to write the names I’m having trouble remembering.
If there is some metadata about names that you can remember more easily (rhymes with X, name of Y character from fiction, would have been taunted on the playground because of Z) use that. I tend to ask people how to spell their names so I can embed the information as text instead of much-more-slippery-for-me sounds.
Having people spell their names does sometimes help, but also tends to be a bit awkward. I occasionally wish everyone would just get their names tattooed on their foreheads!
I’ve had good results with flashcards. One side write a person’s name, and on the other write conversation details, physical descriptions, and mnemonics for physical descriptions. A few days of reviewing that Michael Jones is a friend of Lisa’s who a grad student at Brown studying Fluorochemistry and looks a bit like O’Brian from Star Trek, and you’ll probably remember his name (and other tidbits about him too).
Same problem here (exacerbated if not outright caused by the habit of not using peoples’ names often), but I can remember peoples’ names when really necessary by using a simple trick:
Say their name at least once in every phrase you say to them, for at least five minutes worth of you-saying-things. Lots of normal people do this already without even noticing. Without much practice it will be awkward, though, so you can just mention that you’re bad at names and turn it into a joke.
Same situation here, same solutions tried. Also, even if I’ve known someone for a while, if I don’t see them for a long time and then one day spot them, I may have lost memory of the person’s named. Not often, but once or twice.
What’s worse is that there’s this woman I had met at a weekly group, and after like 4 weeks and three times of asking her name, I forgot, asked another, more socially adept woman there, and she gave me the wrong name! Argh!
I am terrible at remembering names. This is bad in itself, but exacerbated by a few factors:
I regularly have lengthy conversations with random strangers, and will be able to easily summarize the conversation afterwords, but will have no recollection of their name.
I am fairly noticeable and memorable, so even people whose names I have no reason to know will know mine.
I am not particularly good with faces either.
This isn’t a memory problem, I can quote back conversations or remember long strings of numbers. I often cope by confessing to my weakness in a self-deprecating manner, or by simply not using names in direct address (it’s generally not necessary in English), but these don’t actually help me learn names. If I remembered to ask their name early on, I sometimes pause mid-conversation to ask “Are you still x?” but that is somewhat awkward and I’m wrong half the time anyway. The only time I can reliably remember is if they share the name of an immediate family member.This is bad enough that I’ll sometimes be five or six classes into the semester and have to check the syllabus to figure out the professor’s name, or will have been in multiple classes with someone and shared several conversations and still not know their name.
When I started running study groups in college, the training included teaching how to learn student’s names. The trick to remembering names is to say the name out loud, with focus on the name and the person at the same time. So, Joachim introduces himself, and you say “Joachim? Nice to meet you, Joachim!” Give the name and face enough time to sink into long term memory. If they don’t introduce themselves, ask them their name, simply apologizing if it turns out you’ve met before.
Then, at the earliest good opportunity, reinforce the name. Using it during the conversation is good. Any time the topic goes in a new direction, or you or your interlocutor have a new idea, you say “So, Joachim, I have another way of looking at that...” or “Joachim, that is an excellent point.” This is totally normal, but might not feel that way to a person who doesn’t use names frequently.
Finally, it is minimally awkward to, at the end of a conversation, say to the person “Well, Joachim, it’s been so good talking to you!” Or, if you’ve totally lost the name, say with a smile “I’ve enjoyed talking with you so much I’ve managed to forget your name!” And they will be quite pleased to remind you.
Not using people’s names is like a microcosm of this thread—if you don’t use the name, rightly or wrongly, you won’t get affirmation or correction.
That all works if you have the capability of recognizing people but just have not practiced it. But you say specifically that you’re not good with faces. A large number of people are partially or completely face-blind. Many (maybe most) don’t realize they have differently functioning brains from the majority of people when it comes to faces. They often recognize people by their distinctive hair color or facial hair, by particularly large or small noses, chins, etc, or even in some cases, by learning the wardrobes of people they are frequently around. I read about one fellow with 4 young children and he is completely unable to tell them apart. So when one jumps in his lap, he hugs them and smiles and says, “So who are you, then?” His kids think it’s a running joke, which is how he treats it, but it’s the only way he’d know who he’s got in his lap.
The point is, if you are not just “bad with faces” but instead face-blind, you may have to use other, more you-specific techniques for identifying people.
It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I first consciously noticed that I was incapable of using other people’s names to their faces. I could do it with immediate family, and I could do it in third person “Howard was telling me...” I have since made strenuous efforts to get better at it, but it is still really psychologically difficult. That’s also when I realized that it was almost impossible for me to leave a message on an answering machine. I’m working on that one too, but doing so is a serious effort. One of my roommates my freshman year of college had the same issues, but neither of us had a clue why.
It might help to find a friend you can practice with, for the names—if the issue applies to IM/Skype/etc. as well, then you can probably find a practice partner or two right here. Otherwise, hopefully you have an in-person friend who you’d trust to explain this to, and who can encourage you to refer to them by name frequently :)
For answering machines, the same friend can probably help, or you could practice on your own answering machine.
I’ve found that, for most skills, doing really impractical-but-safe practice exercises like this actually really pays off. Even if it doesn’t 100% resolve the issue, it still gives you a good foundation to build on, and helps remind you that the activity CAN be safe.
I sometimes have trouble usings people’s names—I think due to fear that I haven’t remembered them correctly, even if I’m 95% certain or more. If I don’t know the person well it may also seem overly familiar.
That does make it difficult to use the techniques I suggested. Some people do not like other people to use their names because they experience it as an attempt to control them emotionally. They feel it invokes automatic parent-child responses that others ought not have access to.
I think the number of these folks is very low (I’ve only met one person who feels this way). But, if he feels that way, it makes sense that there would be people who might be overwhelmed by the emotional burden of invoking such an emotional response. I certainly feel more burdened when I use his name in the first person. I’m not claiming that’s what’s going on with you. But, your description reminded me of this other person, and we can often gain great insight in hearing something even approximately related to our own difficulties.
As for suggestions, I would suggest that a good, small place to start, if you are able, is to repeat a person’s name immediately after they introduce themselves to you, and leave it at that. I suspect it will help cement a few more names than you otherwise would have, and it might have less emotional impact on you to have a formulaic circumstance in which you can think of using another person’s name with them.
Thirding the request.
I have sometimes contemplated taking out my frustrations by following people around to learn their names, scrounging up any background material on them that I can get, and then pretending to be an old high school acquaintance of theirs, and watching them squirm as they try to remember me.
I’m not entirely certain people aren’t already doing this to me.
People have done this to me. I was amused.
In general, I avoid claiming to actually remember people if I don’t, but I’m happy to engage with them as though we were old friends if they are engaging with me that way. If it turns out that we don’t know each other, well, I’ve been friendlier than our relationship obligated me to be, which is not a big problem.
Me too; nothing wrong with it and some people will be positively impressed with how friendly you are even to people you barely know! Also, being straightforward and not embarrassed to ask someone’s name again helps. A simple “I’m sorry, but I’ve completely forgotten your name; could you remind me?” is usually not too awkward unless you’ve met often enough that you should be expected to remember.
(Also, I am in DC, which is a very business card-exchanging area; remembering getting the card and seeing the name after being introduced is very helpful.)
I’ve started some great friendships by doing just this. Don’t just pretend to run into an acquaintance. Pretend that you just ran into your old best friend X (X is totally awesome BTW, it’s been way too long since you’ve seen them, and OMG do you remember when X did Y? It was so cool).
Requirements: an upstanding and respected mutual friend, an endorsement that a prank will be well received, and a victim with a sense of humor.
At the beginning of 2010 I made it my mission to remember the names of everyone I was introduced to. I haven’t quite managed everyone, but I’ve gotten pretty close.
My technique: when someone tells me their name, I think of something that rhymes with it, and imagine the person in conjunction with the rhyme. I have a general policy of picking the first thing that comes to mind, since that presumably suggests my brain already has some sort of reliable connection between them.
For example, when meeting Sam for the first time, I will think of the first rhyme for ‘Sam’ that comes to mind, which in the case of a recent Sam was ‘ham’. I imagine Sam holding some ham, with a big grin on her face (she has quite a striking grin anyway, so this detail just sort of cements it in place). When I next meet Sam, I will have a striking image of her holding some ham with a big grin on her face, which I can then follow back to her name.
Over the past year or so I’ve built up quite a menagerie of associations. All people called Sue are now in a large group of Blue Sues in my head. Anyone called Vicky is covered in something sticky. Anyone called Kate has an expression of hate.
Sometimes I have to reach for tenuous rhymes. ‘David’ was a bit of a tricky one, but I eventually settled on ‘shavéd’, and imagine Davids to have a partially-shaved scalp. If anything, the more tenuous rhymes are more memorable, because I also have the memory of the difficult rhyme to hang the name off.
This does occasionally create some odd effects. Last September, for example, I know I met two people called Amanda, but can only remember one of them. The act of remembering their name has persisted in memory, but actually meeting them hasn’t.
The most important aspect isn’t the actual technique (as there are plenty of other name-remembering techniques out there which presumably work fairly well), but getting into the habit of using it. It doesn’t do any good just knowing it; you have to consciously choose to apply it whenever you’re told a name you want to remember, and that’s a much harder habit to get into than you’d think.
It’s also a good technique for remembering things in general. I remembered the term ‘homonymous hemianopia’ recently by imagining Hermione from Harry Potter smoking opium and losing half of her field of vision.
Excellent explanation & examples; everything elucidated effectively.
I don’t understand the final example though. Is the memory device just to help you remember some of the letters in the name and the symptom or is there some connection my brain doesn’t make that yours does? HoMoNymous—HerMioNe, HemiAn—HArry, OPIa—OPIum?
The word “homonymous” takes care of itself in my case, since it’s a word I’m familiar with already. The “hermianopia” bit is a not-quite-portmanteau of “hermione” and “opium”.
I remember names after I’ve seen them written in association with the face. I remember unusual names better, because I can ask the person then and there how to spell it. So for anyone with whom I speak rarely, I basically only consistently remember the names of facebook friends.
Method: Add people on facebook immediately after meeting them. Then review the RSVP list before going to any events with an events page!
I had this problem for a long time, which can be embarrassing doing phone support, especially one with frequent callers that know my name and voice (one of only two men and we have distinct voices and greetings). I started intentionally using callers name’s three times in every call and reaped several benefits: 1) I actually remember their names when they call back, 2) I’m better at remembering names having been told only once (even outside of work), and 3) my customer satisfaction scores had a marked and sustained increase.
I’m also normally terrible at learning names, but I’ve learned how to get around it. This may be terribly specific to people who learn like me; if so, I apologize.
I have found that I am incredibly focused on learning through actually seeing things written. I am excellent at spelling because I see the written form of words in my head, and even when I can’t immediately recall the precise letters, I always have an accurate sense of how many there are (which is often enough to select the correct spelling from a shortlist of plausible alternatives).
Given that, I find that I can trivially remember people’s names after having emailed them and typed their names.
Yes, if I have emailed someone and typed their name, I will remember it. My problem is that generally I have no reason or means to write the names I’m having trouble remembering.
Simple habit is to start using Names in conversation way more often. It feels a bit unnatural at first, but can help.
If there is some metadata about names that you can remember more easily (rhymes with X, name of Y character from fiction, would have been taunted on the playground because of Z) use that. I tend to ask people how to spell their names so I can embed the information as text instead of much-more-slippery-for-me sounds.
Having people spell their names does sometimes help, but also tends to be a bit awkward. I occasionally wish everyone would just get their names tattooed on their foreheads!
I’ve had good results with flashcards. One side write a person’s name, and on the other write conversation details, physical descriptions, and mnemonics for physical descriptions. A few days of reviewing that Michael Jones is a friend of Lisa’s who a grad student at Brown studying Fluorochemistry and looks a bit like O’Brian from Star Trek, and you’ll probably remember his name (and other tidbits about him too).
Same problem here (exacerbated if not outright caused by the habit of not using peoples’ names often), but I can remember peoples’ names when really necessary by using a simple trick:
Say their name at least once in every phrase you say to them, for at least five minutes worth of you-saying-things. Lots of normal people do this already without even noticing. Without much practice it will be awkward, though, so you can just mention that you’re bad at names and turn it into a joke.
I second this request. I am good with names of politicians or actors, but terrible with people, I meet IRL.
Same situation here, same solutions tried. Also, even if I’ve known someone for a while, if I don’t see them for a long time and then one day spot them, I may have lost memory of the person’s named. Not often, but once or twice.
What’s worse is that there’s this woman I had met at a weekly group, and after like 4 weeks and three times of asking her name, I forgot, asked another, more socially adept woman there, and she gave me the wrong name! Argh!