It has happened to all of us: meeting someone for the first time…then instantly forgetting their name. Why does it happen? Our brain processes incredible amounts of information every day, so, in order to function properly, it has created mechanisms that enhance its ability to select and store essential information. That is why we have two types of memories: long-term and short-term memory.
When meeting someone new, we are likely to retain information about their profession, their relation to other people we already know, their hometown or other personal information that we can somehow correlate to something that is familiar to us. Our brains love making connections with things we already know, because this allows the creation of new neurological pathways, but it can also give us a sense of safety. A name doesn’t really mean anything in terms of getting to know someone, it doesn’t suggest any personality traits or habits. Unlike this, their occupation, for example, can give us some clues about their social and financial status, education or even their personality.
Let’s imagine meeting someone named Jessica at a social gathering. The name Jessica may not stick to our memory, but the fact that she is a university professor may bring us to the conclusion that she is a hard-working person, she is highly educated and that she has a good social status. So next time when we see her, we may not remember her name, but recall these facts about her instead. Let’s take another example. We meet Michael at a party and we laugh at his jokes, we chit-chat and find out that he is one of our neighbor’s cousins. We are definitely more likely to store his name in our long-term memory and not forget it very easily, because now we have created an emotional bond with him. Names can be arbitrary and pretty impersonal without these meaningful connections.
In a study cited by psychology professor Daniel Willingham in the Washington Post, participants were asked to provide information about a person. Some of them were told that this person was a baker and some were told that his/her name was Baker. The latter were less likely to remember the name, but the former were more likely to retain the information about their occupation.
When does it become a problem?
There is a language disorder called Anomic Aphasia which causes people to have trouble naming people and objects. It could be described as a sensation similar to having a word “on the tip of your tongue” almost constantly. But this is a real medical condition and represents a more aggravated version of the name-forgetting phenomenon. The common cause of short-memory problems is high-stress levels and sleep deprivation. These usually lower our capacity to concentrate and make us more forgetful about people’s names.
Associating faces with the wrong names can create confusion in our workplace or our social circle, thus creating inaccurate connections between people and the mental images in our brains. Our colleagues may be talking about Mary being pregnant, but if we mentally associate the image of Sarah, our other colleague, being in this situation, the next time we see her, we could be asking her about the baby bump or asking about the baby’s name, which could create uncomfortable situations.
This could be a “Moses illusion”: someone could ask us, how many animals did Moses take on his ark. Our immediate response would be that he took two of each type. In reality, the person who took the animals was Noah. There are many similarities between these biblical characters, that is why it is easy to confuse them, especially when being faced with a direct question.
What about faces? Do we forget them just as easily?
When it comes to recognizing faces, we are pretty good at that. It is called face pareidolia and it means seeing faces in inanimate objects, like a “smiling house” or a “surprised bowling ball”. So, if we see human faces everywhere even when they are not real, it means that we must store the memory of that face pretty easily, right? Not really, apparently. We tend to perceive the information, but there are no relevant studies suggesting anything about the storage of these memories.
But still, our brains are wired to pay more attention to people’s faces than their names. Why? It all begins in infancy, because recognizing a face can become vital when it comes to survival. 
We are social creatures, so detecting faces and analyzing facial expressions becomes an important aspect from very early on in our lives. We have a special part of our brain that is dedicated to processing facial features. This makes facial recognition quick, but remembering the names that go with those faces is hard nevertheless. That is why a scenario like “I don’t think I know that person, but show me a picture of him, maybe then I’ll remember him” is likely to happen.
Faces are more complex, they are the result of unique gene combinations and there are lots of elements that can be analyzed individually: eyes, hair, nose, mouth and so on. Still, when it comes to new faces, some minor details like a changed hairstyle or hair color can make it hard to remember them. Yet again, things are pretty arbitrary when it comes to our memory. The advantage when it comes to faces is that two names could be identical, but there aren’t any people who look and behave the same. We are all unique individuals.
How can we become better at memorizing names?
First of all, why should we even care? If it is so common to forget someone’s name, then we should all feel sympathetic towards one another, right? Actually, studies suggest that forgetting one’s name makes them feel less important, neglected and even insulted. This reaction could be linked to the fact that some people, on a subconscious level, tend to ignore the newly received information, because they don’t find the person very likable. It is an ego-related issue, that can be harder to fix and might be an explanation for the reason people tend to get upset.
So how can we enhance our ability to remember names? The first solution to this problem would be repeating someone’s name in the conversation to better embed it into our memory. The downside of this practice could be that it can pretty easily become a little bit awkward. Consciously trying to remember it would be another approach that might guarantee a higher chance of success. This means that we should set a goal to repeat the name every 5, 10 or 20 minutes before we are completely sure we won’t forget it. As we already mentioned, creating meaningful connections would probably work best. If we couldn’t establish a personal connection, then we could think of funny expressions or rhymes that go with the name.
Now that we have learned more about forgetting names, we can pay more attention to this basic human flaw, and use the tips and tricks that were mentioned earlier, so the next time we meet someone new we can consciously handle the situation a lot better.
