Siri on Apple Watch doesn't recognize relationships

Thanks again, tried that, too.

Doesn't help. It's quite maddening.

I: “Message to my wife This is a test“ (In German, of course, English text back-translated)

Text gets recognized perfectly.

Siri: “I don't know who your wife is, to whom should I send the message.”

I: <My wife's complete name, a moderately complex double name>

Siri: “I can't find <perfectly recognozied name including the hyphen> in cour contact list.… ”

*Sigh*

I had this same issue. It used to work, but Siri responds now with "I don't know who your wife is". Even more infuriating is when there are cases where Siri clearly does know the name. I found that if I said "Hey Siri, what's my wife's phone number" it would respond with "I don't know who <insert wife name> is". The irony is, Siri printed the name of my wife right there.

My wife has a hyphenated last name. I updated her contact to remove the hyphen, waited a minute and tried again. Siri is now working properly, so it appears that special characters (as if a hyphen is special) may be a contributing factor. Still unacceptable, but it's a work-around.

Same issue started two days ago on my Apple Watch Series 1 (2nd gen). Apple Watch Wouldn’t recognize contact relationships (wife, mother, sister, etc.) but also, incoming texts displayed with contact’s phone numbers instead of their names as it always had before and, as it does on iPhone. After about two and a half hours on the phone with two different Apple advisers and, after each of them walking me through every possible method of un-pairing, re-pairing, resetting sync data, deleting all content and settings and hard resetting iPhone and Apple watch, the issue remained. The second adviser forwarded the issue and a list of all our attempts to fix the problem to Apple engineers. He said they usually respond to him between three and five days and that he’d get back to me once they do. He also said, the last thing to try is, GULP!, restoring iPhone! He said he wouldn’t have me go that route until he hears back from the engineers but said I could restore iPhone on my own if I wanted to. I know a challenge when I hear one so, last night I restored iPhone from a back up via iTunes. Once iPhone was done restoring it was late but, I tried sending a text to my “wife” only to frustratingly get the response “I don’t know who your wife is. We can set that up on iPhone” with a button under that to continue the text on iPhone. It was too late to keep trying so, that was that for the night. In the morning, I went into the watch app on iPhone, down to ‘general’, down to ‘reset’ then clicked ‘reset sync data’. Just like when the advisers had me do that same process yesterday, clicking ‘reset sync data’ didn’t appear to do anything at all. Nothing happened when I clicked that button however, shortly after that I was driving to work and began receiving my normal daily texts from my wife and immediate family and, I noticed their names displayed with their texts. Not their phone numbers as had been happening. HOPE! I tried “Hey Siri, tell my wife I love her” and voila! Siri knew who my wife is and sent the text. Then I tried my mother, sister and brother and those worked too. I can’t say for sure if merely restoring iPhone and a little time fixed it or, if restoring iPhone, over night then clicking reset sync data this morning is what did it but my watch has been working and showing contacts correctly all day today and, is back to knowing who my wife and family are. I hope this mini trial helps someone out there. Convoluted but, ultimately effective. Restore iPhone, re-pair watch (unless restoring from backup which I think brings over the paired settings) then click reset sync data in the watch app on iPhone. Good luck one and all. Oh, and my wife’s Apple Watch series 2 began having the same issue about a month ago but, she ignores such things whereas I need everything working correctly right away so, I’ll be restoring her phone to get hers back.

Hi

Try these steps:

• On your iPhone: in the Contacts app, tap on your name at the top of the All Contacts list (My Card):
  • Check that your contact card contains your name, Apple ID email address and iPhone phone number.
  • Tap on Edit (top right) and scroll down to the Related names / Add related names section. If they are not already configured, tap on the plus symbol to specify related names for each relationship (adding new contact cards for each, if they do not already exist).
• On your iPhone: Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > scroll to the Contacts section > check that My Info is using your contact card.
• On your iPhone: Settings > General > Siri > My Info - check that your own contact card is selected.
• On your Apple Watch: ask Siri "what is my name?"

Having made any corrections: on your iPhone, in the Apple Watch app, go to My Watch > General > Reset > tap on Reset Sync Data. This process runs in the background / invisibly to the user, so allow a minute or two for this to complete.

Then restart both your iPhone and your watch. Turn them both off first, then restart your iPhone first:

- To turn your watch off: press and hold the side button until you see the Power Off slider; drag the slider to turn off.

- To turn it back on: press and hold the side button until you see the Apple logo.

Thanks for those tips, as I have the same problem as the original poster. Siri Watch forgot who my wife is.

Yet, I did anything you recommended exactly the way you described, made also sure that I had only one card containing my information in the contacts list and yet Siri Watch claims that it doesn't know who my wife is, while Siri Phone and Siri iPad do.

Hi - try also:

On your iPhone, go to: Settings > General > Siri - disable, pause for a few moments and then re-enable Siri.

A restart of both devices afterwards may also help.

Try also these steps:

Check that iCloud Contacts is enabled on your iPhone (and other devices):

- iPhone, iPad, iPod touch: Settings > iCloud - enable Contacts.

- OS X: System Preferences > iCloud - check the box next to Contacts.

Follow the instructions here to check that your wife's contact details are stored within your iCloud account:

Get help using iCloud Contacts - Apple Support

After making any changes, it may help to:

- Close and restart the Contacts app on your iPhone (to close it, double-press the Home button and swipe up on the app preview).

- Reset sync data (Apple Watch app: My Watch > General > Reset > tap on Reset Sync Data).

I Had the same issue.

i solved it by putting my wife,s first and last name together on the first name row in the contacts app.

EXample

first name: Jennifer

last name: Rogers

become

first name: Jennifer Rogers

this applies to all relationships.

Do you tries to open Contacts app -> select your for example wife contact -> Edit -> add related name -> and here select your wife's contact and select "wife".

It works for me 🙂

Thank you! It worked perfectly for me!

You're welcome! 🙂

HI

had this problem when I initially upgraded to 2.0. Followed the instructions and it fixed the problem. Did most recent update this weekend and having same issue again. Tried all of the same troubleshooting and still having problem. guessing the update is causing it. Are there any new fixes? Watch knows who I am, but doesn't recognize relationships. Siri on phone recognizes all of them.

any thoughts would be appreciated.

Changing how my wife's name was listed in contacts also corrected mine issue with my watch not knowing who my wife was (but my phone worked find).

Originally I had it as Last: "Matheney"

First: "Wendy"

I changed it to First "Wendy Matheney"

then tried, Last "Wendy Matheney"

Then if finally worked when I changed it to, Last: "Matheney Wendy" (all on the same line of the "last name" in contacts).

I Had the same issue and this worked for me.

Thank you.

Glad to have helped! 🙂