Names and faces
Names slip away because a name, on its own, means nothing. It's the same problem as a foreign word, and it has the same fix: give the sound an image, and fix the image to something you can see.
The Baker / baker problem
Show people a face and tell them the man is a baker, and later they'll remember it. Tell them his name is Baker, and far more of them forget. Same word, same face. The difference is that a baker comes with a whole world attached: flour, ovens, a white hat, the smell of bread. The surname Baker comes with nothing.
So the trick is to turn every name back into a baker: take the sound and give it something you can see.
Five steps, in the first ten seconds
- Actually hear it. Most names are forgotten because they were never learned; you were busy planning what to say next. If you missed it, ask again straight away. It's flattering, not rude.
- Say it back. "Rosa, good to meet you." That's a second exposure, and you know you heard it right.
- Turn the name into an image. Some are easy: Rosa is a rose, Jack is a car jack. Others need a sound-alike, exactly like a Spanish word: Patricia is "pat a tree", Gordon is a garden, Sean is a sheep being shorn.
- Pick one striking feature of their face: eyebrows, a big smile, glasses, a chin, the hair. Choose the first thing you notice, because it's what you'll notice next time too.
- Make the image act on that feature. A rose growing out of Rosa's eyebrows. Patricia patting a tree that sprouts from her glasses. Gordon's curly hair is a garden, and someone's mowing it.
Then use the name once more before you part, and run the images once as they walk away. When you see the face again, the feature brings back the image and the image brings back the name.
A room full of people
At a party or a first day at work, don't try to learn everyone at once. Take them in twos and threes, and between groups look back across the room and name the people you've met so far. Each time you get one right, it gets harder to lose.