I often suffer the same fate. There's just so many ways you can avoid exposing yourself as a memory midget when it comes to names; occasionally you get lucky and someone else in the conversation will save your butt...

We had dinner all week long with a lovely couple on our Cruise. I remembered his name a thousand times... but each night I had to ask Jeff her name.

Its nutty that dang remember names thing!
-d

It's not so horrible to be bad at names as long as you're upfront about it with a few exceptions:

Mine was too risque. ;-)

Oh yeah...

Progressive Field is not as bad as the name of the Phoenix Coyotes rink: Jobing.com Arena.

I kid you not.

Of course, "Cellular Field" is even worse....mostly because the White Sox play there, but that's another post.

I'm so bad with names, I long ago had to learn to swallow my pride. I just tell people, "I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name."