I've found my ability to recall names (or proper nouns) to decline as I entered my 60s more than any other cognitive facility, both names of people as well as objects that have one-off names, such as 'Montessori' schools or 'Schroeder', the musician in the Peanuts comics. I suspect such name recall is done using a minimum of secondary cues and associations, relying entirely on a very limited subset of neurons and pathways to drive the retrieval.
So far, I've not been able to devise any way to improve such recall, other than to guess the likeliest first letter of the name then step through successive letters to, hopefully, trigger remembrance. But I bery much doubt most of the memory-enhancing techniques that are in vogue will help. Regenerating a mnemonic to cue the name is no easier than recalling the name itself.
> So far, I've not been able to devise any way to improve such recall
The only way I've found is not intuitive: Extreme health consciousness, both in diet and exercise. I pretty much had to give up alcohol as well, just a couple of glasses of wine and I would experience these weird name/word outages.
This might sound rude, but people remember things they care about. Maybe you legitimately don't care about all these names as much as you think you ought, and feel guilty about it?
I've given up and am honest with myself about how many human relationships are transient and not worth holding onto.
I wish it worked that way. Once I forgot the name of one of my favorite singer/song-writer. It's not a one off. I can describe the 'thing' it's many marvellous qualities, obscure anecdotes, but heaven help me with what's the name.
A terrible thing to have if you are interviewing for a job.
I have this and am just 39yo. It’s crazy how I forget someone it’s embarrassing. Usually when I don’t get enough sleep. Forgetting actors or movie names.
So far, I've not been able to devise any way to improve such recall, other than to guess the likeliest first letter of the name then step through successive letters to, hopefully, trigger remembrance. But I bery much doubt most of the memory-enhancing techniques that are in vogue will help. Regenerating a mnemonic to cue the name is no easier than recalling the name itself.