people like hearing their name: Nonlinear Function
Created: March 02, 2022
Modified: March 02, 2022

people like hearing their name

This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.

“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

  • Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People)

There are probably many reasons for this, but one is simply that saying someone's name proves to them that you remember their name and are thinking of them as an individual person rather than a generic interlocutor.

It doesn't come naturally to me, but I've noticed that greeting friends (such as LongtimeCrush) by name tends to lead to warmer interactions than just saying "Hi" or similar. It expresses that I'm excited to see them in particular.