Any nice way to display names for PCB components?

[der.ule]

As eelik mentioned, the name is “text variables” and they were first introduced in v6, a good reference is this post:

New string replacement options for kicad assets

Text variables are in. They are defined per project and can be used in fields, schematic and board text, output paths, etc. Referenced as you might expect: ${var-name}. The existing % escapes (worksheet fields, %R and %V, etc.) were also moved to the new architecture. So, for instance ${VALUE} now gets you the symbol’s value. The set of system variables was also expanded. System variables for symbol text: REFERENCE VALUE FOOTPRINT FOOTPRINT_LIBRARY FOOTPRINT_NAME DATASHEET UNIT use…