How I Remember Names
Names don't attach to features. Unique compositions of features are just too complicated to learn and remember. I can usually note a face is familiar, but not recognizable.
Instead, names get attached to locations. So, if I see a familiar face without a name in a place with a faceless name, I know the two probably go together.
If I meet two people at the same time, I can attach broad categories to the name. Gender, age extremes (young or old; anything in between doesn't help), skin color, anything out of the ordinary or that I covet (I wear glasses so I covet cool glasses), etc. And, to help with remembering, I only attach as many categories as needed to distinguish between the people I met.
If one is male and other female, done. If they're the same gender, then I go to another point of difference between them. But, of course, sometimes I'm distracted and don't catalog enough. So I get people crossed.
(Note: I still would not bet my life on getting the names of my father's sisters correct.)
If I remember someone as the blonde woman in the lobby and someone else as the blonde woman in the lunchroom, I am going to be utterly sunk if I meet them both on my floor. We're still at work, so I only have two faceless names to contend with, but I will have to literally stand there and try to imagine each in both the lobby and lunchroom and try to feel which one seems more right.
And if I meet a familiar face in a place with zero attached names, my first step is imagining that person in different locations because if I can figure out which is right, I can either recall their name or, at least, narrow their name down to a shorter list.
Once I realized this is how my brain works, I try to connect more broad categories to names at the first meeting. It helps some.
