Elf Sternberg

But you do. You have the episodic memory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodic_memory) itself. All you need is practice with various mnemonic devices to effectively hack the brain.

However, it's perfectly normal for the abstract parts like the name to fall out of memory because they are the parts that typically are not reinforced. You might recall from time to time, all or parts of the encounter (which I am guessing was the one you wrote about on 24 June 06). In remembering, you recreate fairly close mental representations of appearance, conversation and feelings. But names are not only abstract and fairly arbitrary (I can imagine we all know people who have changed their name) but also infrequently mentioned unless you or others are either constantly calling someone by name or they refer to themselves in the third person.