How to Find an Old School Friend After Many Years
Eddie — Founder
Published October 2026
There’s something about school friends.
You can remember things from 30 years ago with ridiculous clarity.
Teachers.
Classrooms.
Stupid jokes.
Who sat where.
But somehow you can’t remember their surname.
Very helpful.
Start with the school
School name, suburb, approximate years and year level are all useful.
Then add whatever else you remember.
Sport.
Subjects.
Mutual friends.
Siblings.
Where they lived.
What they wanted to do after school.
Don’t worry if some of it is fuzzy.
Mutual friends can unlock a lot
Sometimes you don’t even need to contact anyone.
Just thinking through the people you both knew can jog your memory.
Old yearbooks, photos, reunion groups and alumni pages can help too.
One name leads to another.
Don’t rely too much on photos
People change.
A lot.
Especially after 20 or 30 years.
I wouldn’t rule someone in or out purely because they do or don’t look how you remember.
The timeline is usually much more useful.
School.
Age.
Suburb.
University.
Career.
Those things can give you much more confidence.
Surnames change
This is a big one, especially when looking for someone you knew a long time ago.
People change surnames for all sorts of reasons.
Marriage is the obvious one, but not the only one.
So if the surname is different, look at the details that are less likely to have changed.
School.
Location.
Age.
Mutual connections.
If you find them
You don’t need to make the message complicated.
“Hi, this is a bit random, but I think we were at school together at [school] in the early 90s.”
Perfectly fine.
No grand speech required.
After a few decades, curiosity is probably the best place to start.
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Eddie — Founder
Eddie is the founder of Someone I Knew, a privacy-first way to help people reconnect with someone from their past using the things they remember and information that’s already public.