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Sunday Night
MaryHelen Swanson, editor

How important is a name, this tag that is placed upon us at birth and sticks with us until the day we die? Very.
Perhaps above all that we possess, our name is the one thing we defend the most. We in the communication business know how important it is to get your names right. So, we ask you to bear with us when we ask for spellings, because there are so many different ways to spell even the most common names these days.
A couple of weeks ago I attended a Dale Carnegie course on making a good first impression. One of the class sections I particularly enjoyed was learning how to remember names. Iím not the best at this, so I was pleased to learn a few how-to tips.
Repeating a personís name upon introduction helps. Occasionally using their name during the conversation helps, too. Overdoing the use of a personís name in conversation is annoying, we all agreed on that.
Association with the personís occupation is helpful, as in John Dough, the baker.
Creating a picture in your mind that associates either first or last name, or both, is helpful. And this is where we had great fun during a hands-on class exercise.
Our presenter was Heidi Hancock. Weíll forever picture her as a little girl in braids signing a big ìJohn Hancockî on the board.
It got more interesting picturing names for the woman in our group who is a mortician, the woman who works in the recycling business, the Forest Lake Chamber director and the computer technician with the most unusual first name of Daree. As for me, the group decided, since I made such an issue of the fact that my name is MaryHelen and not Mary, that they would remember me as, ìMaryHelen, one word, and Swanson TV dinners.î
So, the next time you see me looking at you in a strange manner, just know that Iím creating a picture in my mind so I can remember your name.

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