I had an educational experience yesterday. I was reading a novel set in Turkey, and I observed how difficult the complete unfamiliarity of the names made it for me. Names of people, names of places. It took a long time before I could confidently recognize the names of even the principal characters. It brought home to me the qualifications one needs to append to the general rule: distinctiveness is memorable. We must always remember that distinctiveness is contextual. One Turkish name among a host of Anglo-Saxon names is highly distinctive to me, and easily remembered. A Turkish name in a host of Turkish names is not distinctive to me. And with familiarity, comes a greater ability to be aware of distinctions that were once too subtle for you to notice.

Of course, a conscious and deliberate searching for points of difference helps speed up this process no end!