But as the wife is a curate people seem to sometimes assume that if she knows their name then so will I.
When you're part of a church community it really does help to be able to call people by their first names. And its far more preferable than "I've forgotten your name" smokescreens like "Hi mate", "Greetings Friend", "Wotcha" and soon on.
Over time I've picked up a couple of tips to help me remember names better ...
1) Always try and use the persons name a couple of times early on in your conversation. For me this seems to help cement their name in my short term memory a bit more.
2) In your minds eye try to associate the person and their name with somebody else you know well.
3) I almost always carry a bit of paper and pen with me so - as soon as I can after a conversation - I scribble down the name and a couple of key facts from the conversation to help me remember them.
4) Then when I get home I enter their name onto a list with a brief something to help me remember the person. For me this seems to work as long as every now and then I read through the list and the reminders.
When we moved for my wife's curacy we wee lucky in that the church was having an away weekend in the summer before she started as their curate. So we managed to get along to the weekend which really helped us learn a few names.
In addition at the end of the weekend a group photo was taken. With the churchwardens help my wife was able to write a key underneath the photo of people's names. A quick glance at the photo and it's key every now and then helped us quickly learn people's names.
In fact this worked so well my top tip to church's welcoming new staff would be to take a group photo of the congregation, add people's names and send that to the new staff member a couple of weeks before they start.
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