English Language & Usage Asked on March 31, 2021
Examples of the minutiae at issue are things like a person’s hometown, the name(s) of their partner(s) and/or children, which, if any, college they attended, occupation, etc. Any piece of personal trivia that could come up in casual conversation.
A person who has this ability strongly might be able to intuit and then recall the name(s) and relative age(s) of a coworker’s sibling(s) from a passing comment made years ago to a third party. One who has it weakly might require active study to learn and recall facts about their own spouse and/or children.
"Identity Memory" is a weak candidate that a) is too generic and b) does not seem to be in wide use. I will not reject it out of hand, however; I could be wrong about either or both of my objections to it.
"Long-term memory," "explicit/declarative memory," or "episodic memory" can all be used to describe this.
Note: "Long-term memory" is the only exoteric term in the list, whereas the other two are technical and should only be used with people who are knowledgeable in the field of psychology (or any related fields).
In psychology, there are three main types of memory: sensory, short-term, and long-term. In this case, we are talking about long-term memory. One's long-term memory contains information that is stored for more than a few moments.
Within long-term memory, there are two more categories: explicit (declarative) and implicit (procedural) memory. One's explicit/declarative memory, which is what we are talking about in this question, contains memories that are consciously and intentionally retained.
Within explicit/declarative memory, there are two more types: episodic and semantic memory. In this case, we are talking about episodic memory because the facts that we are referring to are personally connected to "person X."
Essentially the part of the "tree" of memory that we are looking at looks like this:
Long-term —> Explicit/declarative —> Episodic
Therefore, you can use any of the three above terms when describing one's memory (in the context described by your question).
For example:
Jim remembered my 2nd cousins name, which I told him five years ago! He has such an incredible long-term memory.
Answered by user392938 on March 31, 2021
According to Wikipedia, there are four main categories of autobiographical memory, one of which is this:
Biographical or Personal: These autobiographical memories often contain biographical information, such as where one was born or the names of one's parents.
On this basis, you might want to consider the term biographical memory, which would encompass a wide range of personal minutia about other people in one's life. From Lexico:
biographical: (of data or a written work) dealing with a particular person's life.
One's biographical memory could range anywhere from excellent to poor.
Answered by Richard Kayser on March 31, 2021
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