What’s the synonym for your name?

My former coworker was telling me about his biggest irrational fear.

He said that he always had terrible anxiety about not remembering people’s names. Whether he was the new student at school, the new player on a sports team, or the new employee at the company, his fear of offending others by not getting their names right struck deep.

Fortunately, he told me, on his first day of work at our office, the fact that at least one person was wearing a nametag gave him significant relief. Apparently seeing my label was deeply soothing to him.

Whew, at least there’s one guy whose name I won’t forget, he laughed to himself.

You know, it really is the little things in life, huh?

But my coworker is not alone in his fear. Numerous studies have been conducted on this subject.

Quincy, the bioscience company that makes brain health supplements, surveyed six thousand people, and forgetting people’s names was the most common memory complaint with nearly forty percent of the vote.

Not terribly surprising there. Freud himself famously wrote that a person’s name was the single context of human memory most apt to be forgotten. Sounds about right.

But here’s a piece of research that fascinated me. A group of psychologists researched name comprehension among teammates, and they found that while we expect our memories to be reliable sources of information for people’s names, they often fail us.

And one of the reasons is because human names don’t have synonyms. Almost all words have synonyms, and although those words might not be the exact one people want, they’ll do in a pinch. But people’s names, on the other hand, don’t have synonyms. There are no substitutes. A rose by any other name will still smell as sweet, but when it comes to a someone’s name, there is no scent. If you forget it, you’re screwed.

Unless, of course, there is some mechanism to guarantee memory. This is the insight I’ve been sharing about my nametag for many years now.

It’s not that people remember me, it’s that they can’t forget.

This is not an insignificant distinction. See, remembering is on them. It’s work. It takes effort and time and intention and attention.

But not forgetting is on me. All I have to do is slap this damn nametag on, and my identity is instantly unforgettable. And not unforgettable in that hyperbolic kind of way out of one of those old love songs, but literally, people couldn’t forget my name if they tried.

This is a positive thing for all parties involved. For other people, the nametag pampers their memory and reduces their anxiety, like my coworker mentioned before.

But the best part is that for me, making an impression is less work. It’s awesome. People who met me once at a party three years ago will see my label, and through the beauty of reticular activation, remember that we met.

Scott, ironically enough, now has earned its own synonym.

Lesson learned, give others no choice, give yourself leverage. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What’s the synonym for your name?