Point Blank

I was only yesterday in a conversation where I was struggling to remember the name of a world famous actor and celebrity but my brain could just not retrieve it from the grey matter.

The characters played by this individual from the movies were not a problem and I could easily reel off Legolas Greenleaf and Will Turner but for some inexplicable reason his actual name eluded me.

That was indeed strange and worrying in equal proportions as I am usually pretty good at recollection and trivia based knowledge.

It is not as though the person has an ordinary and therefore unremarkable name, far from it. In fact you would think that his name was one specifically made up for Hollywood unlike those of Maurice Micklewhite, Declan McManus, Archie Leach and Krishna Bhanji amongst others who all had to resort to anglicised stage names of, in the same order, Michael Caine, Elvis Costello, Cary Grant and Ben Kingsley,

The name that escaped me was of course that of Orlando Bloom, his real one at that.

In the context of that original conversation  my brain freeze was  not at all important, in fact it had been intended as the theme of an elaborate "in joke" with my wife.

However the forgetting of a name has greater implications in certain situations. This could be at the time of an introduction in a business environment or of a friend or relative in a family type scenario.

There is a critical element in the act of not only forgetting someones name but actually hesitating in introducing them because you have forgotten their name.

Thankfully this is not just a problem that I seem to have.

In recent years there has been a bit of a campaign to bring a completely new word into the public domain to specifically and succinctly describe this rather embarrassing and shameful trait.

It is the word "Tartle".

The procedure to bring about recognition of a new word into the English Language is quite difficult and drawn out although popular culture and the influence of a social media push has certainly fast tracked quite a few.

The inclusion in the Oxford English, Collins and Merriam Webster Dictionaries of such words as bling, chillax, infomania and muggle bears witness to the power of mass adoption and use in everyday conversational language.

Tartle is however a bit of a slow-burner of a word in its intended context and meaning.

It is actually to be found in old Scottish language although various other claims have been made as to its etymological origins including an accreditation to Douglas Adams in his "Meaning of Liff" although I have not been able to substantiate this claim.

The Scottish National Dictionary which has compiled words since 1700 has the following entries for Tartle;

i) A lock or tuft of hair or wool at an animals tail which has become matted with excrement or mud,

ii) tatters, tassels, torn or trailing edges of clothing and

iii) to reduce clothing to ribbons or tatters

and it does not take too much of a modern interpretation to get to the most recent meaning of feeling panicked, or in pieces about forgetting the name of someone when it comes to the making of an introduction.

I have been guilty of this misdemeanour and social gaffe on a few occasions and so have developed a coping strategy for it.

The most effective is to deflect attention from my ignorance and rudeness by just saying "I am sure that you both know each other" or " and of course this is my best friend and colleague" or to just bamboozle and confuse by saying "Sorry for my Tartle".

That may give a bit of a reprieve in which to gather my thoughts, look around desperately for a clue as to the person's identity or invite a third party to take over whilst I go for a bit of a lie down.