Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Tartle- Scottish – The act of hestitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name.

Tartle: A Word I Needed to Know

9 November, 2010 by thevicarswife

I was pointed to a page of 20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words today. Some of them are excellent, but my eye was particularly caught by this one:

7. Tartle

Scottish – The act of hestitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name.

I must say that I often tartle, and so does the Vicar – a hazard of being somewhere where everyone knows who you are and you aren’t quite so up to speed. In a week when I’ve read a few blogposts about moving on to a new parish, I feel that it would be good to share anti-tartling tips.

How do you remember people’s names? Especially when you’re new somewhere?

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3 Responses

  1. There’s a word for that?! Hurrah!

    It often happens when I go and join Dan who’s already talking to someone. We have an agreement now that if he doesn’t introduce me straight away, I know that he’s forgotten their name. That’s when I introduce myself, in the hope that they respond with “oh hi, I’m xxxxx, I know Dan from xxxxx”

    Dan’s top tip is to ask for people’s email addresses, seeing as so many of us have our names as our email address.


  2. I never tartle. I say, ‘I’m sorry I’ve completely forgotten your name.’ But mostly I do remember names. Not faces, though. I’m bad at faces.


  3. Having learned the hard way, and having moved parishes a bit in the last few years, I now make it a policy, as soon as we arrive somewhere new, of announcing that I have a really bad memory and not to be offended if I ask what your name is six Sundays in a row and in fact, why don’t you start every conversation we have for the next six months by telling me your name – and I will let you know when I think I have learned it.

    And of course, there is always making good friends with the one who seems to know EVERYONE, telling them they are going to be your resource person and then sidling up to them and saying, “What’s the name of that person standing near the door, the one I was talking to for about ten minutes just before I came over to see you!” most Sundays.

    “Hi, are you visiting here this Sunday?” always ends badly.



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