On Friday I experimented with a rectangle and to see how Shape.Name would
handle things. No problem. Shape.DrawingObject.Name: no problem (side
note: where the hell does DrawingObject fall in the hierarchy of things?
I
can't find it docuimented anywhere.)

a few general comments here, far from exhaustive
http://tinyurl.com/y52q24

For laffs, here is how ChartObject reacts to each character. What does
*that* pattern mean?

< results snipped

I replicated most of your results for names with characters not recognized
at the drawingobject level.
For me a Space in the middle of the name is not a problem though at either
end it is. Also a few more characters in the range 128-255 didn't work for
me as it seems they did for you.

In testing came accross something else. Cannot prefix the name with a number
(possibly multi-digit) that's the same as the 'object-id' of some other
existing shape. The 'object-id' is a counter that's incremented whenever an
object is added to the sheet, the default name's suffix. Can only be reset
if all shapes on the sheet are deleted and file saved before adding more
shapes.

Regards,
Peter T