Dominic system

The Dominic system is a mnemonic system used to remember sequences of digits similar to the mnemonic major system. It was invented and used in competition by eight-time World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien.

The main difference between the Dominic system and the major system is the assignment of sounds and letters to digits. The Dominic system is a letter-based abbreviation system where the letters comprise the initials of someone's name, while the major system is typically used as a phonetic-based consonant system for either objects, animals, persons, or even words.

The major system would assign the sounds T + L to the number 15, and then find a word that has those sounds as the first two consonants. Mnemonic images like Tolkien, tiles, or toolbox could be assigned under the major system. In the Dominic system, 15 would be the letters A and E, and they would be used as the initials of someone's name—for example, Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein would then be given a characteristic action, such as "writing on a blackboard". Each two-digit number would have an associated person and action.

The Dominic system is specifically designed as a person-action system, while the major system can also be used to represent stand-alone objects. Many mnemonists use the major system as a person-action system as well, so the main difference is the way that images are assigned to the numbers.

Like the mnemonic major system, the Dominic system can be combined with a memory palace, thereby creating the Hotel Dominic.

Using the dominic system every pair of digits is first associated with a person. Dominic O'Brien feels that stories and images created using people are easier to remember. This encoding is carried out ahead of time and the people are reused, since it can take quite some time.

To perform this encoding, each digit is associated with a letter using the table below. These letters then become the initials of the person representing this number. People will often use quite a loose definition of "initials", using the initial letters of a phrase describing a person, such as "80 = HO = Santa Claus, laughing and holding his belly (HO, HO, HO!)".

Once each pair of digits has been associated with a person one can then cheaply create a corresponding action for each person. For example, if one had chosen to represent AE as the physicist Albert Einstein one might use a corresponding action of writing on a blackboard.

Once the mappings of a pair of digits are in place a sequence of digits can be converted into a story by first encoding pairs of digits as people or actions and then chaining these people and actions together.

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