How Bad Is It to Forget Someone's Name?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I like to think that in the real world being honest about forgetting someone’s name doesn’t hurt, but then again remembering someone’s name is way more impressive.
I think most people like hearing their name being said so even when I slipped their name into things that people normally say without using names it didn’t come off as too creepy, at least I don’t think.
I rarely forget someone. I also rarely remember their name, even after being told it multiple times. When I meet people I totally tune out when they say their name, partially cause I'm socially nervous, but also my mind is jumping ahead thinking about interesting things/questions, like what they do or the meaning of their t-shirt slogan. I just don't find names interesting themselves... They're just labels. And labels don't matter, they things being labeled do.
But there is also some sort of mental block, like a brain stutter, going on. Cause I often(like 1/2 month) can't bring to my lips names of best friends, people I've known years interact with weekly if not daily. It's usually only a few seconds or a minute before I can get their name. But, it's weird and low-level worries me.
I often forget people's names because when I meet someone new I'm so busy thinking "don't forget their name!" that I don't really hear their name properly.
Spared me from writing this comment I guess, lol
Couple of things that sometimes help, thought not as much as I wished they did -
In meetings, I have a notepad out and write them down. Or ask for business cards. Sometimes with cards I can't remember which belonged to whom, but it narrows the possibilities way down, at least.
Sometimes if I can quickly think of someone else I know with the same name, it will anchor it a bit for me. Without repetition I'll just forget it later, but it gets me through a conversation.
I repeat a person’s name as I introduce myself, yet it’s completely reflexive (“Hi X, I’m Y.”). I don’t internalize the name and then I don’t know it a few seconds later. I developed stressful coping mechanisms in college to hide this, but have since learned to be very proactive about advising people that I often forget names and will need to ask later. I don’t feel any shame or awkwardness when I have to ask because this disarms the situation.
e.g. Anna, teacher with dreadlocks.
Then the next time I see them from afar, I whip out my phone to refresh my memory. And then I go up to them and say hi.
I rarely forget details about a person, so making conversation is not hard. It's their name I keep forgetting. Writing that down has helped immensely.
It takes more taps enter details in Contacts, not to mention the Last Name, First Name are fields with limited visible length, and scrolling left-to-right on a phone is tedious.
Also I don't want to pollute my contact list with the 10-11 Annas that have no last names, but have descriptors like "has dreadlocks" or "met at conference".
A few years ago, I picked up a habit I saw Michelle Obama use: she says “nice to see you” instead of “nice to meet you.”
The phrase feels warm and appropriate to new folks, but keeps the ones I’ve met before from feeling forgotten.
Has saved me a hella ton of aggravation and worrying.
edit : if I know from context that I've met someone before but don't recognize them / remember name, I just come right out and admit it straight away : "Hi! We met before but I've forgotten your name, sorry -- what is it?"
Works every time.
I do agree that to lie at all is a terrible idea.
Often I wonder if “memory” is a skill that I never properly learned. It seems for me that simply remembering an arbitrary past event in any significant detail isn’t really possible.
Only if it’s a story I’ve retold on several occasions (and likely by now as much fiction as non) am I able to retain a firm grasp on a particular past event.
Forgetting names or faces? They slip away almost instantly, and holding onto them is like trying to carry water across a room in my hands.
Childhood is more like an abstract notion. If asked to write about it, certainly I remember basic facts but they are as much deduced as they are seen in my minds eye. A few moments here and there—again, probably stories that I retold at some point—but mostly anything firmly in long term memory isn’t really accessible in “true color” like it seems most people can have it.
I presume there’s an anatomical explanation that could become apparent upon autopsy, although nothing so remarkable as to alert on a full body MRI.
Then again, I can remember code that I wrote 15 years ago. Not exactly line for line, but when I’ve had the occasion to revisit old code, it’s as if I never left it.
Again it seems to come down to creation versus observation. Observations which aren’t actively re-encoded just end up in /dev/null to a great extent for me.
My wife says I’m blissfully ignorant, and it certainly seems to have served me quite well as a coping mechanism. Hard to carry a grudge when it just doesn’t occur to you how angry you were about something last month.
I’m not even sure it’s something I’d want to “fix” even if I could, except perhaps the names and faces thing.
This!!!
But if I read the name I’ll remember the exact spelling forever.
When I lived in my hometown (until I was 16), memories were always vibrant -- I suppose kept alive by constant association.
After I moved away to college, I gradually started forgetting things from my hometown, even things as recent as my high school years.
After graduating from college, I moved to the countryside in Japan. I found that I started forgetting things about my college years -- even people I hung out with fairly regularly. As for things from my high school or junior high years? Forget about it.
Six years ago I moved to Tokyo; the context change has apparently been enough that I'm forgetting a lot of things about my time in the countryside.
I've always attributed it to a combination of a lack of importance (that is, I consciously or subconsciously decide certain people just aren't important enough to commit to memory) and a lack of associative cueing. Out of all the people I knew in college, I only talk to two -- and them rarely. I don't talk to anyone from high school or before then at all.
I've always wondered if this memory issue is at least partially genetic, though, because my two brothers and my father all have the same issue remembering names and other trivial facts. We all will also forget things that our wives have told us, not because we weren't paying attention at the time, but because our subconscious minds just decided that particular piece of information wasn't worth storing.
I really wish I could just run CCleaner on my brain or something...
Especially the part of carrying grudges. It has happened numerous times where I just forget what I was unhappy/sad about, or a particular thing a person said to me, which was clearly offensive.
I find myself hanging out with them, months later. And then if I recall that old event, I think, well f*ck, I should not be talking to this person.
Forgetting names, is especially hard with relatives. As you might know, Indian families are quite big and tightly knit. It is really embarrassing to see me parents (or my brother) remember each of the ~50-60 of relatives and family friends. While I am just standing their and calling every one Uncle/Aunt, instead of their proper "relation name" (look at https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Hindi/Family_relations)
But, as the parent comment mentioned, I rarely forget about a thing which I had worked on or built (though not on a scale of 15 years !! yet..), but atleast 2-3 years. I sometimes have very specific memory, like, I can say "yeah, go to this file and you will find this function, which was written in this file earlier, it was written by that guy who left the company 2 years ago...insert-other-useless-stuff.."
Which might create a impression, that I have a good "memory".
As, a matter of fact, even mental arithmetic, is kind of hard to do. It seems that most people have lots of answers preprocessed and stored in their brains.
I clearly remember, when I was in highschool. I used to actually calculate things, for instance, If I want to calculate '9 + 3', I would count 3 times from 9 to 12. And I thought, being fast in arithmetic is doing this counting thing way faster. Slowly, this was turned into a rule that, it you add X to 9, the answer will be 1(X-1). And then very slowly, I am kind of building up on these rules for doing faster "maths".
But, I see people all around who have all of these basic operations (taking certain %, adding, subtracting) basically memorized, or they have incredibly fast processing speeds. And here I am not talking about some math involving big numbers, but just number we encounter in our day to day lives.
Maybe the arithmetic thing, might not be related to my memory issues, but just lack of practice. But, still I feel there is something definitely out of place.
It could be that, my memory issues stems from the concept of living in the "now". I rarely ever look back into memories. I am constantly looking to do the next thing to "do", instead of sitting back and talking a look of what has happened in the past. Even, when I am sitting back and "relaxing", I think about what I am doing currently, "Ok, I am sitting on a bench, looking a trees, that thing looks interesting ... .. ". Very rarely, I look back and think about some particular, day, event, or person.
For instance, If we want to an adventure park today. In next couple of days, I will rarely think about it. Yes, I will look at the photos and all other social media stuff. But, it would be a very superficial glance. And I am pretty sure that I will forget about specific details, or some other interesting thing about the adventure park after a couple of years. Which I am pretty sure, a normal person, like my girlfriend, will definitely remember.
The strangest example of this is when I was in a coffee shop in London a couple of years ago and instantly recognised a man in the queue with me as someone I met in an airport over 10 years ago and had a 5 minute (max) conversation with. I remembered his name, that he had a new born son and his sons name, that the birth had been stressful and he was going to take longer off than his planned two weeks so his wife could recover, that he worked in bio-pharmacy research and a few other details.
Needless to say he was pretty shocked and clearly didn't remember me (because why would you?!) but we ended up chatting in the queue again and he was amazed I could remember so much detail from an airport conversation. This isn't the only time it has happened either. It happens more often than I realised until my wife pointed out my "freak super power". I don't think I have ever thought of this person after meeting them either. At least not consciously. Yet when I saw his face in that Costa coffee shop it was like an HD video started playing in my head of when we met in Charles de Gaulle all those years ago. The brain is an amazing thing.
Now if only I could channel this "super power" (freakish as it may be) for good rather than just being the person friends and family look to when they say "Ohh I recognise that person, what other film/tv show have they been in?" as I always seem to know the answer.
Do you think it’s contagious, whatever it is you have?
And you could work for the police [1]
[0] http://www.alphr.com/science/1004162/are-you-a-face-super-re...
Waiting in line, he walked up to me. "You are visiting $PLACE" I replied yes, sweating slightly as the location was thousands of kilometers from this entry point. "I remember you were working for $COMPANY, are you still there?" Who is this guy was all I was thinking, do I know him? I'm still in the queue awaiting immigration. "Can I see your passport?" Border crossing and border guard. Presenting this and flicking through pages, he smiled widely "See my badge, I stamped your entry 2 years ago (the stamp had his badge number)". He walked off happily. I went through routinely. I'd only ever used this entry once before, that time when seemingly he was behind the immigration desk.
Recognition and recall are two very different things. The article conflates failures of recognition (X doesn't remember ever meeting Y) with failures of recall (X doesn't remember Y's name).
Most of "How to make friends..." has come naturally to me since I was a child, except for the names.
So I just started, with Marjolein. After the introduction I turned around and repeated to myself "this was Marjolein. Marjolein". After a couple of times it becomes natural.
Being able to call out people by name, showing you remembered their names, is very powerful.
Also, is that the whole technique? Seems like you'd have to say it for quite a while to get it in to long term memory - if you're doing it straight after it doesn't seem like it would qualify for spaced repetition. Do you do it again later?
Much much better than average. Some people are surprised I can recall their name months/years later after 1 interaction.
> qualify for spaced repetition. Do you do it again later?
I think with Marjolein and the subsequent 10 - 20 I did. But it becomes "natural" after a while.
In general though, my brain is not optimized for this. I rely in no small way upon having a digital extension to my memory. Usually, not being able to remember months and years of my life is more of a personal concern than not being able to remember names or faces. But, it's not clear that the broader issue is solvable, so I write on my hand, and apologize for the necessity.
It’s the same effect, I think, where writing down a reminder means I remember it even when I lose the reminder note.
Or even easier: Try to remember the color of their eyes while listening to their name. Don't know why but works wonders for me.
As a bonus, you also make a good first impression thanks to eye contact.
Due to generations, geographies, culture, etc there really aren't that many different names (especially when only pronunciation matters).
I eventually found that, when meeting someone, I would immediately think of the name and face of someone I already knew with that name. Even if it was a girl from a class in middle school, the number of previous names or the passing of time doesn't seem to matter. If I can apply the new face to a face and name I already know there's a high likelihood I'll remember the new face/name association forever (just like we can all remember the name of some random kid from second grade, somehow). It's as simple as saying to myself:
"This is Shannon, like Shannon from middle school and Shannon from that gym you used to go to."
Then the next time I see the "new" person I'll often immediately recall:
"Oh, hey! That's Shannon. Like Shannon from middle school and Shannon from that gym you used to go to."
It really seems to scale almost infinitely and to this day I can go almost anywhere I've been before and remember the names of people I may have "met" once years ago.
If it's a new name the process is slightly more complicated. Many times I'll try to think of a place, town, business, item, pretty much anything and that generally works. I've also found that it happens so rarely simply remarking "WOW, that's actually a new one" is enough to give me a pretty good chance.
The reactions are really interesting but I keep doing this and using this method because the results are almost always positive for all parties. In many cases (especially in the service industry) you can see their face and demeanor change instantly when you've demonstrated you made some effort to remember their name.
Reminds me of the "What's That Name?" SNL skit:
If I never found out the person’s name, then I probably won’t remember them at all.
The memory is there—I just have no look-up key (where for most people, that would be the person’s face.)
I rely mostly on gait, height /build, dress habit, hair / facial hair, voice. If someone grows / shaves a beard or gets glasses, I'm pretty hosed. Example : my own uncle cut his hair and shaved his moustache, I didn't recognize him until he spoke.
Given two people with similar skin darkness, could you recognize that one is White and the other East Asian? Or that one is Indian and the other Black?
Do you notice any deficiencies in other types of pattern recognition, or more generally any other mental differences that you think might be connected?
Same here. I've forgotten enough names on people, even people I've known for ten years and deal with on a weekly basis, to be bothered by it. I generally remember the name some minutes later, but it's often too later by then. I've never found asking someone for their name ("Dude, I'm sorry, I'm completely blanking on your name", depending on the formality of the event) to cause any particular problems.
Plus it sets the stage for any number of anecdotes or comparisons.
It hopefully works ok.
I've found that when I make it clear that I remember a person and want to say their name, they are always very forgiving and any potential awkwardness is diminished. It also gives the other person an opportunity to try to guess my name as well! I'd say most people don't remember other people's names on the first try, and the typical coping mechanism for that is to avoid saying names all together. To allow myself to stumble also allows them to stumble, which is a relief to both parties.
This isn't to say that it's better than actually remembering a person's name from the start, but not remembering a person's name isn't the faux pas a lot of people believe. It may seems that way because we know how good it feels to be remembered, and we want to be that person who remembers everyone else's names, but instead we come up with excuses in our heads to just avoid names as much as possible.
After such incidents, I almost always remember the other person's name thereafter because I now have a rapport with them. Rapport is key because, without it, the garbage collector in our brains chuck out "orphaned" data. Well, at least mine seems to. But I've gotten much better.
The first is just straightforwardly honest (and forgetting my name is completely understandable), whereas the second can feel a bit disrespectful, though it's hard for me to analyse exactly why. It's not a big deal, and I've done it myself, but personally I wouldn't recommend guessing unless you're reasonably confident you'll get it right.
Mostly I think remembering the person is much more important than remembering the name, anyway. If someone forgets me entirely, that can be hurtful if I remember having an interesting interaction with them. Even if they remember my name, that doesn't mean very much if it soon becomes clear that they don't remember anything from our last conversation. But if you remember me, I don't much care whether you remember my name.
I've never really noticed anyone get offended when i've forgotten, thouhg i guess i don't know their thoughts, and personally I don't get offended when most people forget my name. I dunno I find after a quick little reintroduction and then moving on it's usually ok. Heh actually there's a friend of a friend I see occasionally and we've introduced ourselves to eachother every time. Technically we've known eachother for years now but it's just how it goes I guess.
The thing i've actually been bad with is using people's names in conversation. I don't know why but I used to feel weird saying people's names to them. I've come to learn though it's a bad habit and most people enjoy hearing their names.
My personal trick is to ask someone how to spell their name, this usually works just fine, unless they are called John Smith.
If I can’t see it, I will almost certainly not remember.
And before you talk about lack of empathy/caring, this happened to me all the time when I was younger/meeting women. Back then I would forget their name after about three sentences, so I tried to run a background process "I really like this girl, her name is $NAME, and it reminds me of $SOMETHING". But frequently that itself would cause problems as people can detect when you aren't paying 100% attention to what they are saying..
I suspect some of us, have the perfect genes for survival in the jungle with our 20 family members. The new large group social skills are something we can't deal with. So we are being selected out of the pool along with our killer instincts for other methods of survival. Frequently I wonder if some of frank Herbert's (there is some more recent similar stuff) science fiction where the human race is devolving into ant/bee like colonies is where we are all going.
Moreover, there not one tech aptitude, but more like multiple different aptitudes that makes you more or less suitable for different positions.
I'm getting happy when somebody remembers me.
Focusing on the positive things in people is a great way to enjoy social interactions.
Funny, I can remember all sorts of crazy things. But I will choke on a name. Frustrating!
And because it happens, despite honest intent to avoid it, I never let anyone else, who gets stuck with this damn thing, feel bad about it.
Good as it gets. I am sorry in advance.
How else does one play this?
Edit: To the poor, deserving soul forgotten, I usually express some variation on my frustration expressed here, and let them know I am totally good for a save, or favor, whatever in return for understanding. Just say the word.
Usually goes well, but some people have trouble getting past it. Understandable.
(I really hate missing a basic like names. )
It felt a bit weird at first but overtime him showing up was a point where the whole team felt connected and would chat about the weekend etc. He was former military (and would shake your hand if he had the opportunity) and he forced a bunch of tech people to bond unknowningly.
I kinda do this now, at least when I come into the office if I run into someone I try to say some type of greeting with their name.
This has caused me repeated embarrassment and really annoys people.
I will talk to high school friends and mention people I knew in college, and they will say, "Who?" I'll do the same thing with college friends, mentioning high school friends, forgetting that I knew them from separate places.
And after a year or so goes by of me not having seen someone, I pretty much have to re-meet them.
This often prompts a reintroduction by the other party and will soothe their anxiety if they've forgotten your name as well.
I’ve learn to never ever say “good to meet you” and always say “good to see you” instead.
Worse, attraction plays a big role, and being married, leads to many conversations, generally of comedic value at this point. Maybe not the same conclusion in the early days. But one borne from confidence and time.
I've done it a few times and nobody seems to really care.
Frankly, I find it unnerving if someone I barely met remembers my name. Is this person stalking me?
Even weirder is when someone just comes up and say "Hi <my name>"...because they hung out with my brother in high school (he is 6 years older than me) and remember me simply because I look like him. This has happened twice, both in my late 30's. Seriously, you aren't supposed to remember people that long.