I loved cognitive science when I was an undergrad. IIRC one of the paradigms in memory research is "Levels of Processing". The more attention you pay to something, the better you will remember it. This is exactly what you are describing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levels-...cessing_effect
It's an old theory and somewhat outdated. There are all kinds of related studies that are interesting. Googling "False Fame Effect" and "Implicit Memory" can be fun. The latter term means there's some stuff you remember but you don't remember that you remember. For instance, if you are asked if the name is "famous", you are more likely to describe the forgotten names as "famous" than a random name. So you must remember it on some level, right? So why can't you get at it?
Back when I cared about these things I used to love papers by Larry Jacoby.
http://www.psych.wustl.edu/amcclab/publications.htm