A thought regarding the question about whether cats not just recognise, but also actually identify with the names we give them:
Is it fair to expect that a person / being should identify very strongly with a name they themselves is unable to pronounce?
They say that cats only learn certain combinations of sounds which later associate with their owner's commands to come over, to eat, to sleep, to go away, to take their place, etc., etc. Intonation means quite a lot though, according to our own experience. Cat's name pronounced in an angry voice associates with taboo of some sort. His name pronounced in a tender voice makes him proud and makes him (subconsciously) show affection to owners. Etc...
But in fact, they recognize names and understand requests even without related intonation. They are a lot smarter than we're used to think.
Our cat Kuzya was an expert in russian language.
He was the smartest kitty i've ever seen.
When another 2 female cats appeared in our house, i made an experiment, involving all of them. Kuzya seemed to understand better what i wanted. So: i imitated cats' sounds with my voice and made certain movements, because i'd seen that when they did something, they accompanied their actions with exact "words" and "phrases". I started imitating their language, and they began to respond.
When i was making mistakes, Kuzya and Lucy corrected me!
I'm sure: if there are experts who understand birds' language and who talk to birds, and birds talk back,- then why not to try to understand cat language... Because it's an entire language.
Btw... It occured to me,- talking to nightingales.
They were talking back! That was at daytime, beneath the shrubs on river Izhora banks, in a pretty rural place, called "Old Kolpino". It's an abandoned part of our town (after WWII), and one can meet birds and animals there, as well as anywhere outside the town.
Eeeh... Sorry for the offtopic
: i suspect, i just miss being outside and communicating with living creatures (besides humans, lol).
