h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have the common affliction of having a terrible memory for names. Now, one of the tips they always give for remembering names is to conjure up an image in your head. So, for instance, you could remember Douglas Potter's name by imagining him and Douglas Adams standing at a pottery wheel spinning clay.

Now I tried this with a woman I met last week, surname of Irwin. Shares the first name of a local newsreader/TV presenter. Irwin's is a popular baker, so I imagine said presenter standing there with a big loaf of Irwin's Nutty Krust. Perfect!

Except...who the hell was the presenter? Is she Cecilia Irwin? Angie Irwin? Rose Irwin? Marie-Louise Irwin? Yvette Irwin?

So when I met her again today I just bluffed it with "Ah! Hello Ms Irwin!" in a jokey kinda way, but I can't call her Ms Irwin forever.

Lovely girl. Wish I could remember her name!

I can't remember names and I have the additional problem of not recognising faces.

That's why interchangeable terms like "mate" are so useful. They are a good way of hiding it!

Traveller in Time not using pictures
"Best way I manage to remember any name is by calling the person.

Speaking out loud their name while giving a reply, asking or remarking something.

The mnemonic is in the relation between what I say and the person involved. "

I can't recognise faces (there's word for that) either, but I'm good on names - once I know who a person is, I can remember their birthday, telephone number, name of pet etc etc, so far as I ever knew those details in the first place.

As for mnemonics, they're more of an effort to remember than the fact/name/number itself.

German mnemonics are ridiculous. For example, to remember the points of the compass, they say "Im Osten geht die Sonne auf, im Süden nimmt sie ihren Lauf ..". (In the East the sun rises, through the South it goes on its way..) They don't seem to realise that it would rhyme just as well if you said "Im Westen geht die Sonne auf, im Norden nimmt sie ihrem Lauf..")


Mind you, you could also say "forty days hath September..."

At least in English, you don't have the additional embarrassment of trying to remember if you called the person "Sie" or "Du" last time you met.

Yeah, the thirty days rhyme can lead you astray. Rhyming mnemonics work by the sound being memorable - the same as poems and songs. But then you have to remember which "-ember" month is the odd one out. The rhyme would work for all.

There's a guide entry about the face recognition thing - I can't recall the name either but I remember Gnomon and Dmitri talking about it in PR. I think they both have trouble with faces.

At one stage h2g2 had three Guide Editors and all three of them suffered from face-blindness. There's a latin name for it, something like 'prosognomia'

Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia.

Entry A87740382

And that little hello disk is a phase?

Sorry, I meant face.

I remember faces all right; I even sometimes draw parallels between their facial structures and those of celebrities. Example: I thought Tacsatduck's face looked like that of "Superman" Christopher Reeve. Even in costume and makeup, I sometimes go to a movie and recognize an actor/actress by face shape.

But names? Hopeless. I have to see them written out a few times before I remember them.

It seems a shame we have to have names.

Nah--tac's eyes are way too sparkly (Man, I miss teasing tac about that--that, and his driving. He drove from Sacramento to visit us up here in Crescent City in 4 hours. It took us, pre-children, 5.5 hours (where he was driving from was less than 5 minutes from where we used to live down there, when we'd be coming up here to visit family))

And back on topic... mnemonics don't hep me much, unless they're really drilled into me. I couldn't recite "Thirty Days..." until after I learned the month lengths with the knuckle method. Yes, I could only do the month mnemonic after I already knew what it was supposed to help me remember

I used the knuckle method for years.

Mnemonics helps me in learning things like my library card number.

What's the knuckle method? I haven't heard of it.

Oo, Monday's NaJoPoMo

I already know what I'm doing tomorrow.

Tomorrow's 1 November, Amy. Get to work!