forAbetterWorld wrote...
....
. . . Symphony had a manuever to make use of a
fortuitous arrangement to convert a presumed label to a "name".
That was simply convenience. Excel, to my knowledge has never
offered that convenience creating a name. . . .
....

FWLIW, I too started off with Symphony. While it was a better
spreadsheet than character mode 123, it was a terrible word processor.

Anyway, try putting the following strings in B1:D1 and A2:A5.

AA BB CC
w
x
y
z

Select the entire range A1:D5, press [Shift]+[Ctrl]+[F3] or run the
menu command Insert Name Create, and Excel should display the
Create Names dialog with Top row and Left column boxes checked. Click
OK, and you have the following defined names.

AA B2:B5
BB C2:C5
CC D2:D5
w B2:D2
x B3:D3
y B4:D4
z B5:D5

This has been part of Excel at least from the original Windows version
in the late 1980s. It's likely it was in the original Mac version from
the mid 1980s.