What's Your Name?

How come we can remember phone numbers from dozens of years ago, the date of friends' weddings, and all the ingredients for Aunt Mildred's Apple - Rhubarb pie, and yet you can't always remember Aunt Mildred?

Or her name, at least.

You meet someone at a function (either work-related, or something enjoyable) and exchange names, and within 1.4 seconds, you're scratching your melon and asking yourself, "What the devil did he say his name is?"

A hit from 1962! Hear it here!

That leaves but two options: swallowing your pride and asking him to repeat his moniker, or picking his pocket, extracting his wallet, and looking at his driver's license.


So, before we all become little Oliver Twists, let's ask the director of the Memory and Plasticity Program at the University of California, Davis about why we forget names. His name is Charan Ranganath, and don't you forget it!

He says the simplest explanation is that you just are not interested enough! “People are better at remembering things that they’re motivated to learn. Sometimes you are motivated to learn people’s names, and other times it’s more of a passing thing, and you don’t at the time think it’s important.”

For instance, if you think that the person you just met might be the answer to your lifetime prayer for a meaningful love, or might be willing to lend you fifty bucks, you will remember his or her name for sure.

But, it's not always that. Sometimes you want to remember, but you may have trouble remembering because you won't put in the time to log their name into your memory.

Their name might be bland and uninteresting (there are such names) or because you might already know people with that name. I have known three John Armstrongs and four Steve Millers, not counting the Space Cowboy from the Pompatus Of Love.

Although, if another Steve Miller should come along, I might just call him Steve Miller.5, and who could forget that?

A rare name may be easy to recognize but harder to recall. We've all met someone and then had to wonder if her name was "Charlotte Sidebottom" or "Charlotte Bottomside."

And you know you want to get it right.


“You’re not only remembering the name, but you’re remembering the name in relation to a face. Even if you get the information in, which we call encoding, you might not be able to find the information because there’s so much competition between other names and other faces in your memory,” Ranganath says. “People are often overconfident, and they underestimate how hard it will be later on.”

He also says we get distracted by trying to make a good impression or trying to seem like a witty, charming conversation partner, so, in other words, use fewer words and try to wedge this person's name in your cranium.

How to do that?  Ranganath says to try linking something about the person to their name, and he uses the example "John the Jogger." I once tried using "Joe The Jerk," and it wound up being embarrassing when I called him "Dr Jerkface," which is no way to greet your new dentist on a second visit.

Final tip: say the person's name back to them right after they tell you what it is. That will help them in case they just forgot it!

It happens!