Although Lemmy's userbase is quite large,it still is small enough that I do often see the same people in comment sections. It feels though, that I should recognise more names, because I can only remember around 5 individual ones.
Connect lets you tag people, witch helps with recognition. Both in positive and negative sense. I usually tag people before adding them to my ban list, to see if their behaviour is coherent or a fluke.
Aside from that there's a couple of names that I recall through their frequency of posting or a very specific name, such as Mr cumfart, flying squid, pugjesus and Picard. Otherwise I sometimes recognize names, but not in a way I would recall them.