What value is there in knowing and remembering a name?

In Retail work, you get to see a lot of people and particularly down at the Kiosk at the railway Station, often this meeting although regular, is very brief, and so one could be forgiven if one decided not to bother trying to get to know these fleeting customers, especially as many of them appear for a while and then simply disappear with out notice. Or so it often seems.

With approximately 200 customers everyday it is a battle to put the right name to the right face and I have 3 or 4 people I regularly give the wrong name too, no matter how hard I try to correct myself. The ones who come every day are not so bad but those who only come once or twice a week, often when there is a rush on present a little problem. But overall I do fairly well with most names here in Australia.

In South Africa, I often couldn’t even pronounce their names let alone remember them, but here it is much easier. I still make mistakes but not that many. However the response I get from various people when I remember their names quite stuns me sometimes. On two memorial occasions, I have had people exclaim, “You remembered my name” And my only response is to silently say well that was no hardship. I only asked you your name yesterday, so remembering shouldn’t really be a big thing. But obviously to them it is and it again highlights to me the importance people place on having their names spoken to them.

It helps too when it is a foreign or difficult name, if you can have a fair stab at pronouncing it somewhere half correctly.

In South Africa, most Xhosa’s had two Christian names, an English one and a Xhosa one. So some one might have Mcedisi and Patrik as their first names, and if like in this case, Mcedisi is extremely difficult to properly pronounce by non Africans. Europeans, like us Aussies, just use Patrik. But it meant a lot to him if one used his “proper” name. And in fact can often be a test of you and your acceptance of them. The first time I met this man was at a conference and I had to give a brief message from the Bible, so I had my Interpreter read it out of his Xhosa Bible while I spoke from my English bible. He said afterwards, “I knew that you would be alright when you read from our Bible. (Even though It was He who read it, it was important to him that it was read first in his language, even though I spoke in English. This must have also rubbed off on Mcedisi, as later when he spoke to me and I asked him his name he said Mcedisi. Of course I had to get him to spell it out while I wrote it down. Later the young man who invited me to the conference was talking about Patrik and I had no idea who he was talking about and he in turn was amazed that Patrick had given me his Xhosa name and not his English one which he normally used with other foreigners.

Now I know that that was there then, but it just may be today in Australia, you may come across some funny sounding names too. If so, I would encourage you to take the trouble to learn how to pronounce them because it will truly be appreciated. I guarantee it.

Though I must warn you, you may have a minor problem if you use people’s proper names, when others around you don’t. I know of at least two people recently whom I have gotten to know by there “real” name only to find that their workmates only know them by an Anglised version of their names, and thus haven’t a clue who I mean when I mention their true name.

This says more about their workmates than about them. What about you my friend? Will you take the trouble to know who your friends and workmates truly are?

So my friend what is your preferred name? Mine is Walter.