When you meet somebody, you should remember the person’s name. That’s what we’re told is proper. If we don’t remember, it supposedly means we don’t care to know the other person. But I feel it is overemphasized in our culture. A name is just an arbitrary label given to a person by their parents or other relatives or friends. Granted, not having names would make life extremely difficult as we would have to use hard-to-memorize numbers or some other system I can’t even fathom right now. But I think people should care less about how much you know their label and more about whether you recognize them and how much you know them as a person.
A dog doesn’t know another dog’s name. A dog might identify another in a doggie park by appearance, but also by smell. They and many other animals rely on their sense of smell. As humans, we rely on our sense of sight. So shouldn’t we prioritize visual recognition more? Acknowledging that we recognize a person should be validation enough that the person created a (semi-)permanent impression in our grey matter. Just yesterday, a guy mis-took me for a fellow med school student that he knew. I didn’t get offended because the guy who he thought I was may look a lot like me. But if the reverse happens and somebody doesn’t recognize me even if they’ve met me multiple times, I would be more offended.
Besides, names can be tricky things. Some are hard to pronounce and remember. Or some names are shared with other people they know and that creates confusion. But each person has a unique appearance (except for perhaps identical twins.) Different people have better memories in certain senses compared to others. I tend to have a visual memory so I never forget a face. Others might remember the sound of a voice better. But a voice, a look, a smell… each is a characteristic of a person that is part of them. A name is a tag. Wouldn’t it be great if it was the cultural norm to tattoo our names on our foreheads? Then forgetting names would never be an issue.
It comes down to a person remembering each individual as a person. That’s what matters more than a name. I try not to quote Shakespeare, but he got it right when he wrote, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
+ Atul
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