Nailing the name game is not just a social nicety, but the secret to forging strong connections. Mr Dale Carnegie, the American self-improvement and salesmanship guru, once said, “A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language… It is a very personal and important part of their self-worth.” I can attest to this. For three months, as the world grappled with a pandemic, I was working at a local supermarket with a name badge that read “Fiona”. Amid a global crisis, it didn’t feel appropriate to moan about getting a new one printed. So, despite my valiant Sharpie adjustments and polite reminders that I was Flora, I conceded to being Fiona. But it was really jarring.

Conversely, overuse of your name can irritate. While I appreciate Carnegie’s sales psychology – that you will stand out as a true professional when you call your prospects and associates by name – we have all been on the receiving end of a call where the repetition of your name (generally in a slightly sycophantic manner) becomes almost laughable.

Experts agree that poor focus is the biggest barrier to remembering names. In a digital age where we can outsource our memory to our phones, we do not need to remember information that we can simply add to notes or google in a second. A quick search for “hot stressed chef TV drama” immediately takes me to Carmy, the main character in The Bear. Looking hot and stressed. The more we outsource our memory, the flabbier our brains become, like an out-of-condition muscle, says the psychologist and memory expert Dr Catherine Fritz from the University of Northampton.

The anthropologist Dr Robin Dunbar famously noted that 150 is “the magic number” of close contacts for any individual. His theory states that from early hunter-gatherer societies all the way to the modern workplace, people have always been able to maintain this maximum number of relationships. Even in today’s social-media age, despite the fact we are electronically aided in growing and maintaining our friendship groups, Dunbar’s magic 150 still holds sway for most of us.

Living in this always-on age of constant overstimulation means we are often distracted and therefore fail to register new names. Mr Mark Channon, a Grand Master of Memory and productivity coach, explains his key to remembering names: priming and pictures. “Priming is when our brain becomes aware of something that’s important,” he says. “It impacts what you pay attention to and in turn remember. When you’re primed, you listen. Then creating a mental picture relating to that person’s name will form an association that you’re more likely to remember.”

For me, Channon sees flowers and butter. Could be worse, I suppose. The more you practise doing this, the more it will become second nature, although Channon says there is no magic hack and this does require work. It can take six weeks to make a real difference to that flabby memory muscle.

The worst thing you can do when meeting someone new is immediately tell them that you are “bad with names”. Not only are you basically informing someone that you don’t care enough about them to make an effort to remember them, but it conditions a belief that you are bad with names. “It’s like giving your brain a command, which means it stops looking to make associations or remember,” Channon says.

Some people have the added complication of a name that is difficult to enunciate. I am sure we have all cringed listening to someone mispronounce a non-Anglo name. A man all too familiar with this is the journalist and food critic Mr Jimi Famurewa. His full name is Olufolajimi, but he explains how Nigerians in Britain would have “English names” to appear more mainstream, code-switch and not be held back professionally.

Famurewa says people are increasingly making the effort to get it right, for which he is grateful, but there is still the occasional “can’t you be called Smith?” “joke” that just isn’t funny. Similarly lazy and cringeworthy, when the Spanish footballer Mr César Azpilicueta joined Chelsea in 2012, the team’s captain, Mr John Terry, decided his name was difficult to pronounce, so called him Dave instead. (In short, don’t be John Terry.) Famurewa describes people behaving as if their language is the only one as “a myopic, self-centred attitude”.

“Just be really honest, in a respectful and friendly way,” is Famurewa’s advice on how best to navigate a difficult-to-pronounce name. “Names are racked with meaning and significance. People who’ve had a lifetime of apologising for the perceived difficulty of their name can be a bit touchy, but it doesn’t need to be overly serious.”

Finally, there are those rarer names chosen by parents who want to make their children stand out in life. Celebs can always be relied on to deliver. Who needs priming and pictures when they are introduced to Techno Mechanicus, Moon Unit or X? I think I can cope with Fiona.