How to remember names

joythinker

joythinker

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I find that I keep forgetting everyone's name, both friends and relatives. I find it quite awkward to ask a friend to remind me their name, he is like 'this guy doesn't even remember my name and yet we are friends'.
When I say I know someone, it is more often than not that I know them by anything other than their name, I scarcely remember to ask for the name in the first place.
Assuming you have a similar problem, how do you try to get used to using names and remembering them.
 
I usually remember them by location, or the last time I saw them in person. That's how I remember the person-- by location. For me, it's easier that way.
 
Hi again Joy!

I'd like to recommend a book to you, it's called 'Moonwalking with Einstein' and the book is about a "memory journey".

A guy named Josh who is a journalist was sent to cover a competition called the Memory Championships. In this contest, people will memorize an entire deck of cards (their order) in under a minute, some in less than 30 seconds and then wait for 5 minutes and then put the deck back in order. They'll memorize pages and pages of random numbers, binary digits, etc...

The more Josh saw the more interested he got and thought that they were super human with Rainman like brains. It turns out that they're normal people, albeit nerds in the extreme, who have simply trained themselves to reorganize how their brain warehouses memories. So he decided to see if just anyone could do it.

Long story short, he learned the techniques and practiced and came to won the memory championships himself.

In the book the first technique that is described is how to memorize a shopping list. There was 13 items on the list. I read the book only once and it was about 2 months ago and I still remember, very clearly, all 13 items on the list.

I find it positively fascinating. I started my own memory journey and am learning the techniques, albeit slowly. So far I have a few short goals that I have already met and mastered. I gave myself small goals because well...my memory is crap lol. I didn't want to overburden my tiny brain and have it boil over or anything, so I wanted to simply memorize my driver's license number. It took all of about 20 minutes.

Now, when I say it took 20 minutes, that's not just going over and over and over it again until it's in my head, it's a technique, it took me 20 minutes because I wasn't very good at it yet, but the point is, the technique that I used will allow me to memorize it indefinitely. So I then memorized a few other things, my wife's driver's license, my wife's social security number, my Microsoft serial number for my computer....and the best part is, is that it's actually fun.

If you would like, I would be very happy to hook you up with the book, just send me a message, and if it's permissible, I'd also be happy to hook you up with a couple of websites that will help you get started on your own memory journey if you'd like.
 
It truly is Mark, if you're interested feel free to let me know and I'll be happy to hook you up too and get you started. Though it'll be a few hours from now, I'm headed to bed just yet.

....or so my wife tells me.
 
Sounds interesting that memory story, I will definitely contact you Geng.
 
I've started off by first learning the Major Number System.

The Major Number System is a system where the numbers 0-9 all have a letter and those letters are used to form words which are then used to form a scenario in which the information (numbers in this case) are more easily remembered. For example...

When I recall my driver's license number now, I don't try to think of the numbers, because I can't recall them...instead I recall a silly little clip. Mr. Potatohead walks into a room, he's drunk...he vomits onto the floor and then sniffs it...his eyes roll back into the back of his head and then he says “F*** YEAH!”

….It's stupid...I know...but it's highly memorable. (if you remember nothing else from what you've read hear, I guarantee you'll remember Mr. PotatoHead throwing up and sniffing it...

Now that you have that image firmly into your brain for absolutely no reason...let's break it down.

Firstly here is the Major Number System:

0-S or Z
1-t or d
2-n
3-m
4-r
5-l
6-g or sh
7-k
8-f or v
9-b or p

I don't know how those numbers came to equal those letters...I just went with it...I'm sure there are people who have their own system but this one is the most popular that I've found and is used by a LOT of people...

Now if you'll notice, there are no vowels in that. Which is good because you can turn td (12) into ton, tan, ten, toon, etc... What is important are the consonants. Tomato is only tmt, which is 131.

Easy right?

I kept practicing the Major System over and over again at every chance, turning words into numbers and numbers into words...trying to memorize phone numbers, license plates, etc... I noticed that turning words into numbers was the easy part...turning the numbers into words took some thought and consideration...but more on that later.

Now that you have the gist of the Major System, remember Mr. Potatohead? Remember when I said that was my driver's license number? Let's break it down.

My license number is 911831028

9 1 1 8 3 1 0 2 8
p t t v m t s n f

pttvmtsnf didn't make ANY sense at all to me and I can't think of a single word that contains all of those letters in that particular sequence...so I broke them down into 'chunks'.

Ptt vmt snf

Still, that doesn't really scream any words to me...so, I thought about it for a while and eventually (and this was really the hardest part about this process..coming up with the words)

I came up with Potato Vomit Sniff

I know...there's only one f and I put another one in...but Snif and Sniff are the same phonetically. So now I have my three words. Potato, Vomit, Sniff. When I break them down using the Major System, it's easy to get my number. But....now I have the problem if remembering these three random and completely unrelated words...

I tried to put them into my house (also known as locus) using the method of loci I mentioned earlier about placing the items mentally around your house...

Well...that didn't work at all for me...I suppose I could have, I don't know, put a potato in the passenger seat, vomit in the floorboard and then after I noticed these things...sniff them?

Sniff was the hardest one to place...and what ultimately made me rethink how I was to remember these three words in order. Because order was, of course, important. So I thought of something else I read in Moonwalking. When Josh was memorizing cards he would use a system very similar but instead of memorizing 3 things and placing them in his locus, he would combine them and make a story out of it.

So, Potato...the first thing that comes up in my mind when I think of a potato is Mr. Potatohead. Which is grand because we can very very easily make him do whatever we want. Now the story just writes itself. Mr. Potatohead found some vomit and sniffed it. But that, to me, isn't very memorable. So in my story he's drunk...he stumbles in, vomits on the floor and then sniffs it like a lunatic. The sniffing like a lunatic part is what cements it because it's weird. If you see 300 people all throwing up and one person vomits and sniffs it lovingly...which one do you think you're going to be reminded of?

Things that are perverse, disgusting, weird...these are the things that stick out to us because I think that we've learned to tune out the mundane and ordinary because for the most part...they rarely concern us directly.

I was SO excited by being able to memorize my license. It was the first bit of information that I memorized without using the rote system.

The rote system is how most of us learned to memorize things. Thing of how you memorized your times tables in school. 6 x 1 = 6, 6 x 2 = 12, 6 x 3 = 18..... and then you wrote them over and over and over again until you virtually tattooed the information onto your brain.

The rote system takes a lot of time and effort. And for somethings it's great...it's automatic...no thinking required. But for me that just doesn't work very easily, I can remember it for a very short time but after that it just leaks out of my brain and into oblivion.
 
GenghisJohn said:
I've started off by first learning the Major Number System.
.....
The rote system takes a lot of time and effort. And for somethings it's great...it's automatic...no thinking required. But for me that just doesn't work very easily, I can remember it for a very short time but after that it just leaks out of my brain and into oblivion.
Click to expand...

You might be really interested in the book "Born on a Blue Day" - it's a memoir written by an autistic savant about he feels colors and sees numbers and how he can remember Pi to the 1,000 decimal. Not really "applied reading" like what you're mentioning but incredible none the less to be told what it's like to think differently than the average individual.

I remember name signs much quicker... I'll double check later what someone's name is but I'll remember "K" very easily.

I know it's not the norm but my friends (hearing) jumped into giving name signs to people based on what they already knew about them. I'm SOOOOO bad with names.... it really helped to place who was who when I'd meet 5 new people in a night... even though some became more harassing than sincere ("Bronson" was named "B" like shoes because he has a boot fetish"... whatever, I remembered his name. hahaha... and PS it's changed since ;)
 
Forgetful of names, good with faces...and yes, it gets embarrassing at times....

And Black people, their names and spelling is out of this world!
 
ohmylight said:
You might be really interested in the book "Born on a Blue Day" - it's a memoir written by an autistic savant about he feels colors and sees numbers and how he can remember Pi to the 1,000 decimal. Not really "applied reading" like what you're mentioning but incredible none the less to be told what it's like to think differently than the average individual.
Click to expand...

I think, if I'm not very much mistaken, that is called synesthesia. I saw a few cool documentaries about that, one that sticks in my mind is the human calculator. He would see colours in his mind instead of numbers and they would merge together to form a new colour (number) without doing any math himself. man...that would be awesome.
I remember name signs much quicker... I'll double check later what someone's name is but I'll remember "K" very easily.
Click to expand...
When I'm learning new signs I HAVE to know "why". Someone can show me the sign for "understand" but unless I understand (lol, see what I did there?) that the sign is like a light bulb going off above my head in understanding, then I'll only retain it for a few hours or so.

I know it's not the norm but my friends (hearing) jumped into giving name signs to people based on what they already knew about them. I'm SOOOOO bad with names.... it really helped to place who was who when I'd meet 5 new people in a night... even though some became more harassing than sincere ("Bronson" was named "B" like shoes because he has a boot fetish"... whatever, I remembered his name. hahaha... and PS it's changed since ;)
Click to expand...
I've never been given a name sign so I'm not entirely sure what they are, from what I just read I THINK they're the first letter of their name and a feature about them... Your idea though about the guy with the boot fetish...that's a great way to remember! The more bizarre and strange, the more likely you are to remember.

I was reading about (in the einstein book) about how they remember names and faces, it has something to do with finding a distinguishing characteristic on their face and connecting the name that way...I'm horrible at it and haven't applied much to it just yet, I'm still working on numbers at the moment.
 
That is what my deaf friends do(I have not yet grasped the art myself). They study you and settle on some unique feature about your looks(appealing or otherwise). Well, nobody cares whether you will be offended or not.
Altenatively, if part of your name matches that of a well kown fellow, such as that of a celebrity, and if they have already given that famous guy a signed name, then you might as well share the signed name with the celeb. Yap, some of the names can be quite unflattering, but again nobody cares.
 
You see, I am still fighting tooth and nail to memorise the system first, then I shall get down to practicing it, I hope that will not take me light years upon light years.
 
GenghisJohn said:
I think, if I'm not very much mistaken, that is called synesthesia. I saw a few cool documentaries about that, one that sticks in my mind is the human calculator. He would see colours in his mind instead of numbers and they would merge together to form a new colour (number) without doing any math himself. man...that would be awesome.

yup! That's the term... It's incredible how he gets a vibe for a color off a person then knows what day of the week they were born. That's why the book is titled born on a blue day... Blue=Wednesday

When I'm learning new signs I HAVE to know "why". Someone can show me the sign for "understand" but unless I understand (lol, see what I did there?) that the sign is like a light bulb going off above my head in understanding, then I'll only retain it for a few hours or so.


I've never been given a name sign so I'm not entirely sure what they are, from what I just read I THINK they're the first letter of their name and a feature about them... Your idea though about the guy with the boot fetish...that's a great way to remember! The more bizarre and strange, the more likely you are to remember.

think of sign names like short hand... But it's also a cultural right if passage in a way? It's not customary for a hearing person to name someone... Which is why my application isn't really the right way... When there's a big team of makeup artists at my shoots they get a generalized "hair+J" or "hair+C" instead of finger spelling "Cassandra" all the time. Day to day most people I see who are friends/peers sign but are hearing... I use PSE mostly because of the auditory communication barrier... If a deaf person is going to name one of them it's me or.... Me. Haha I don't see my deaf friends enough :(

I was reading about (in the einstein book) about how they remember names and faces, it has something to do with finding a distinguishing characteristic on their face and connecting the name that way...I'm horrible at it and haven't applied much to it just yet, I'm still working on numbers at the moment.
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(Typed in the quote)
 
:hmm: Introduce yourself with the same name as them???
People I've met who do memory tricks associate something about the person's face or body with letters. And also use their name 3 times when you first meet them.
 
This might help memorize (or at least understand) the Major System:

0-S or Z
I link 0 and S to a desert. S reminds me of sand. I imagine standing on a desert, imagine the hot and grainy sand between my toes. I look around and see nothing.

1-t or d
To make the lowercase letter t or d, the first thing you do is make a down stroke. It looks like the number 1, then you add the cross or the semicircle.

2-n
The lowercase letter n has 2 downstrokes.

3-m
The lowercase letter m has 3 downstrokes.

4-r
R is the last letter in the in the number 4.

5-L
Hold up your hand. Hold up all 5 fingers. see how index and thumb form an L?

6-g or sh
The number 6 looks like a G.

7-k
The letter K is two number Sevens back to back. Cut it horizontally.

8-f or v
If you lay the number 8 on it's side, now it's infinity...or Forever

9-b or p
If you take the lowercase b, flip it upside down you get a q, but it gets bent in the process, so q turns into 9.
 
ohmylight said:
You might be really interested in the book "Born on a Blue Day" - it's a memoir written by an autistic savant about he feels colors and sees numbers and how he can remember Pi to the 1,000 decimal.
Click to expand...

I am reading this now. Realy liking it. Thanks for mentioning it!
 
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