How to easily make a bad impression: forget a person's name. If there's one word in every language in the world that is the most important to somebody, then it's their name. And their own name is more important to them than the name of everybody else on Earth put together. Knowing this, how can it be acceptable to casually forget somebody's name?
"Oh, but I'm terrible with names". Unless you have a medical problem with your memory, then the reason that you quickly forget names is simple: you can not be bothered to remember them.
We forget names in an instant. Seconds after being introduced we've lost the name, but remembered another fact. "Oh you know - that bloke who is a landscape gardener - what's his name again?". Our brains have different areas for the recollection of names compared with storage of other information. And we can train ourselves, mainly just by paying more attention, to remember the name of almost everybody we meet.
"Oh, but I'm terrible with names". You can see this as a genetic predisposition, a curse that can't be overcome, and embrace it as part of your identity in a grovelling show of self-acceptance. Or you can see that sentence for what it is: a challenge to improve.
Go out. Speak to people. And call them by their names.
J
PS here are some useful tips for remembering names. Now you have no excuse.
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