Hacker News Reader

Comment by clvcooke | Hacker News Reader

The headline indicates that forgetting someone's name is bad, however the article treats that as forgetting someone entirely. I'm curious what the impact of the inbetween would be; that is "I remember I've met you before, but I can't remember your name".

View on HN

The article also seems to conflate forgetting appointments with forgetting facts. I can easily see how if someone forgot an appointment with me, it would be annoying and damage the closeness of a relationship. I have zero resentment, however, for someone forgetting my name. I have forgotten people's names far too many times to get angry over such things.

> I have forgotten people's names far too many times to get angry

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.

As someone who's absolutely abysmal at recalling names and physical features, but with a good memory for personality and interactions, my experience has been that the impact's rather minimal - while it can lead to a few awkward moments, it's much more important for social interaction to remember who someone is than their arbitrary identifier.

Plus it sets the stage for any number of anecdotes or comparisons.

If I can remember someone but not their name I usually try and be quite frank about - "hey sorry I forgot your name but when we met you had that cool story about how you did X".

It hopefully works ok.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com