Hi Mark,

> A way of assigning a pre-existing name to a newly created object...

There are a couple of plug-ins that can help with this currently -

AssignName - set the name of an object from a list of existing named objects:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3830.4

AssignPresetName - set the name of an object from a fixed preset list of names in a text file:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3830.8

- Michael