I find it more painful to waste precious minutes looking for that specific mage with desired paths. For the sake of MM reduction I change all random path mages names.
The prohibition in RAND game hurts but I can understand why it's required.
Well ... the big problem with renaming is that the enemy can see your names sometimes. Might just be the little extra intel your enemy needs when arming against your SC.
And might just be the thing that gave your cheating away in a RAND game when a message would never be seen.