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Comment on Is it weird that I cringe whenever someone calls my name and I avoid using peoples names when talking to them?

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early_riser@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

I’m blind, which I could have mentioned in the OP for extra context but eh. People often greet me without telling me who they are, or even making it clear I’m the one they’re greeting.

Remembering names, as I understand it, is a very visual thing. Humans use visual cues to tell people apart. I don’t have that option, and there’s no polite way for me to say “hi, who are you again?” When I have the chance I’ll tell people to identify themselves when saying hello to me, and ideally also remind me how I know them if they see me out and about as opposed to wherever I first met them.

If I only have to interact with you over a single day, I can pretty easily use things like clothing, hair and skin tone to differentiate people, but one change of clothes later and you’re a stranger. Over time I can match voices to names but it’s not as quick as the visual method. Odor is another big one, if they use perfume or body spray, if they smoke, or if they cook in a way that produces distinct odors.

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smh@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I’m face blind and your methods of telling people apart sound very similar to mine. I don’t use odor but I do use gait. I also often just assume that I know someone if they act like they know me, and I play along until I figure out who they are.

I also didn’t like hearing my name much until I changed it. Now I’m happier to hear it, and even diminutive forms of it.

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BillyClark@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I suspect that blindness changes the rules and expectations by quite a lot, so most of my advice would fly out of the window.

However, I do personally have a problem with remembering names, and so I have one bit of advice that I think is relevant.

there’s no polite way for me to say “hi, who are you again?”

My advice is that, if you think you have, say, a 60% chance of getting their name right, just say that name. If you get their name wrong, they’ll probably correct you, but if you’re anything like me, when you think it’s 60%, the odds are actually much higher.

That is actually what I do, personally, as a person who is bad with names. I realized that I used to mentally punish myself when I messed up a person’s name, but conversely, when somebody else messed up my name, I didn’t care and immediately forgave them. Basically, I was holding myself to an insane standard that I didn’t hold anybody else to.

So, instead, if I think I more likely than not know the name, then I say it. I’ve only had one person get upset with me in all the time I’ve been doing this. It’s a person who I used to run into fairly frequently, like once every couple of months, but I seemed to have a mental block on his name specifically, and I simply couldn’t remember it no matter what I did.

My only other advice is to be careful about letting people know you can identify them by odor. It depends on the odor and the person, but some people could probably be offended by that.

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