Name dropping

HUMAN BEINGS do not easily remember the names of other human beings. That's how the brain works -- or doesn't work -- and maybe it's time for people to simply get comfortable with it.

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Getting comfortable might help alleviate the problem, for the stress of trying to construct clever name-prompting mnemonics or strategies for surreptitiously writing down the correct answers on index cards in one's pocket could be making people so uptight that they're having trouble remembering their own names.

For centuries the slip has been considered the ultimate gaffe, the affliction of losers, and a social sinkhole on the path to personal and professional greatness. An industry has grown up around experts who promise to retrain the brain through books and workshops that usually begin with the words, ''Pay attention."

As if one weren't trying hard to do just that most of the day -- which is a prime cause of name slippage, given that there is way too much going on for a person to keep ''Smith" and ''Jones" straight. The best that one might retrieve from overloaded gray matter is, ''I know it's a really common name."

That's why people sometimes mumble when introducing the mystery person to someone they know -- or they'll ask, ''Have you met my husband?" hoping that Smith/Jones will take up the conversational slack and introduce himself. A feigned coughing fit can also get results, particularly when it is accompanied by introduction motions as the person at a loss for the name grabs a glass of water.

People have been known to duck behind plants when seeing a name disaster approaching -- or they'll quiz other people in the room, who may be just as clueless as they try to remember if the prompt is ''Mr. Sears has big ears," or ''Mr. Wynn has no chin."

These people might even be lost in a ''memory palace" -- a mental tool dating back to 13th-century Italy that requires them to go on an imagined tour of a great castle, associating what they wish to remember with various rooms. A ''Mrs. Hall," for example, would be in one, perhaps next to ''Mr. Knight" -- unless that's the code for ''Mr. O'Day."

Must it always be so torturous? Will people bumble on through the millennia squinting at an illegible name tag while pretending to admire someone's tie?

How much smoother social interaction would become if the phrase, ''Sorry, I forgot your name," were as acceptable as chatting about the weather -- and if masters of the memory game, who insist on repeating a name two or three times in a sentence, were recognized for being the irritants they are.

Suggestion for the name tag of the future: I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours.