Hi, Dale.
Sorry for the imprecise language -- Formatting and Erasing are the same thing, as you discovered.
I suggest Zeroing when people are having trouble because it allows the OS to test the surface of the drive by writing to every part of it. That maps out any bad sectors, so you've got a clean surface. It's not necessary for all users.
There's no problem with the names you've selected. And -- you're right -- if you change the name of your drive, links won't work any more, so don't do that!
I've never seen anything like what you're talking about with a Sandbox, and we've had them for years. "Similar" names don't really matter... computers are pretty exact things, and we link to the name
exactly as it was at the time of creation... I can't think of any reason things would vanish and reappear: you're literally using the same home folder...