If you’re bad at remembering names, here’s how to get around the issue

I have never been good with names. It’s a shame, because I’m pretty good with faces, and can usually tell within seconds of meeting someone whether or not we’re likely to get along.

In my first job in London, I worked in an office with just 13 other people. I hit it off with all of them immediately. It was five weeks before I could remember who the hell any of them were.  

This may come as a shock, but people can get quite touchy about their names. Generally speaking, they’ve had it for as long as they can remember, so when you don’t know it, they feel you don’t know them.

If you’ve already been on speaking terms for a few minutes, they may take this as an assault on their person.

This can be quite daunting on your first day in a new job when, like a rabbit in the headlights, you are pelted with information at such a rate you even forget what your own name is.

It doesn’t get easier. New business meetings, mergers, networking events. As you move up the corporate ladder, people enter the firm below you, and you have to learn their names, too. So, that’s a lot of names to learn, and a lot of offence to cause if you fail.

However, there are ways to get round the issue, if it’s one you struggle with.

Where possible, group names together. I used to do this with girlfriends I knew wouldn’t last, making it easier to recycle birthday cards, and limiting the odds of saying the wrong name in the throes of passion.

If you only go out with Charlottes, the ill-judged tattoo you got of the first one’s name is suddenly a smart long-term investment, rather than an error of judgment.

You can apply the same principle to your employees. Only hiring people from a select pool of names lowers the mental capacity needed to recall them all. You will also save a great deal of money on mundane items, like name tags.

Most people who went to the right schools or universities tend to only have the same few names anyway, so that helps.

Or you could just do away with the pleasantries if you’re that kind of employer, and call people the same name regardless.

It’s a cliche – the senior figure who just addresses his underlings by the surname of the assistant he first had 30 years previously, and all the rest in between – but there’s a reason why it has stuck.

But if you don’t have the power to get away with that, what then?

A technique I was given at school was to ask a new acquaintance their name, and then repeat it straight away, usually in the format: “So-and-so? How do you do, So-and-so, I’m So-and-so,” which gets confusing if you’re both called So-and-so. It works, though. Asking for business cards straight away is good for reinforcing the information.

Finally, you could always try mnemonics and association – linking the person’s name to something that reminds you of it, like a word, an object or place, to trigger when you need reminding. And though it might be tempting not to, try to make it something palatable.

You don’t want it slipping out that the name of the person you’ve just met reminds you of something uncouth.