Recently, my friend gave birth to a baby girl. Until their daughter arrived, she and her husband decided not to assign a name. Although they had candidates selected in advance, they wanted to wait until they saw her sweet little face to determine which name was the best fit. I don’t understand this approach since for me names do not seem to be tied to a person’s appearance. Shakespeare’s Juliet tells Romeo that a name “is nor hand nor foot, / Nor arm nor face, nor any other part / Belonging to a man.” When I named my own children, I chose names that I wanted to repeat for the rest of my life rather than trying to discern a name when first gazing upon them.
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. — Dale Carnegie
This particular point has been the bane of my existence. I love meeting people. I love talking to people. I love hearing their interesting and divergent points of view. I absolutely dread that moment at the end of the first (or even second) conversation where we pause and say, “It was nice meeting you …” and trail off into silence rather than being able to whip out the name that was proferred at the beginning of the conversation.
The strange part for me has been walking through crowds, picking out the faces of those I have met, remembering the topic of our discussions and wanting to continue the conversation but feeling somewhat reluctant to do so because I couldn’t call out to the person before he or she passed by.
The zenith of my name recall coincided with the first meeting of my husband’s extended family. There they were, arrayed in a circle and happily sipping on sweet tea. As they each nodded, smiled, and spoke their names, I felt my mental cache filling up. And yet! Somehow I pulled off the improbably feat of repeating every name as I went back around the circle, only failing at the last person. My mother-in-law has never forgotten this proud moment, though I think of it as a “stupid human trick.”
Knowing your own weaknesses is the first step to addressing them. I have tried a variety of approaches to name recognition over the years with varying degress of success.
When I was in college, my co-operative degree program employer hired me to start at their office in January. When I arrived for my first day, they gave me the tour and I noticed a pile of printed photos from the office Christmas party the month before. Later that day, I returned to the break room and sorted through the pile to find the faces of all the people I had met that day. I sat down with the company directory and turned those prints into human flashcards, quizzing myself over each one.
Once I graduated from college, I took my first quality job and was one of the youngest staff members, which seemed to lead others to think my memory would be better than theirs. Since I had recently purchased a digital camera, I kept it with me at work. When the development team pointed out the wiki had user pages for each of us, I took it upon myself to offer to take photographs of my coworkers and to post them on their user pages. This was an excellent opportunity to talk directly with each of the new people I met and the collaborative experience helped me to associate the names with the faces much more closely.
Fortunately for me, and perhaps for you as well, the spread of technology has resulted in the frequent pairing of photographs with people’s names in social media. In the absence of images, I find that even an e-mail address can add the visual cues needed to help me to associate the verbal and written exchanges, the essence of the dialogue, with the name of my collaborator. A tangible reminder such as a business card received at a conference is a convenient medium for a contemporaneous record, as James Bach uses in exploratory testing, of the matter at hand.
What tips and tricks help you to recall names?
Thank you for this post. I too have struggled with remembering newly introduced people’s names for most of my career and have used similar techniques whenever the opportunity presented itself.
When swapping business cards I’ve always found it helpful to note on the back of the card the context; when and where I met the person and perhaps what we talked about. If their business card includes a picture, so much the better. This is especially useful at conferences. Either way, I try to make a point of entering them into my address book with a picture from LinekedIn or wherever I can find one and the notes on when and where we met. It helps tremendously.
Great idea to pair the business card with a photo of the person! I’m adding that to my arsenal.
In New Zealand the swapping of business cards is not the norm between testers (still got loads of my business cards for 2009). I like associating a new person’s name to someone else I know by that name, and to use their name in the conversations.
The last time I had a business card was about 10 years ago, so having people ask for my card at STAREast was a bit comical, with me pulling out a little notepad to scrawl my info. That was a first for me, so maybe testers in the US don’t do that often either?
Name association with people you already know does sound like a good strategy. My friend who recently had her daughter said that she vetoed certain names because they were already too strongly associated with other people she knows. I wonder whether that ever causes you any confusion?
Unfortunately, my problem is both names AND faces. Many times I end up introducing myself to people who say we’ve already met (sometimes, more than once!). it could be quite embarrassing.
If it’s co-workers we’re talking about (or, people I always meet in a specific context), it’s a lot easier. I use my cell phone to write their names, according to the order in which I met them. I keep the note and go through the names until I’m sure I remember which is which.
Thanks for the suggestion, Tal.
My current employer has “the wall” where they post photos of employees with names and fun facts. I’m new enough that my photo hasn’t appeared there yet, but it will soon.