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.