Wow. The numbers thing... If someone wants to assign numbers to their villagers, I think its their perogative. I also gave numbers to one of my villages as a way of trying to keep up with who's who and did not once feel that village was any less important than any of the others. I have tried the various ways mentioned by others, but the best way for me to keep track of parentage was just to keep a family tree of my own. As for names, half of the time I keep the names the same. Sometimes I will alter it if the name is too weird or if I already had a villager named that. In one village I gave all Anglo names in alphabetical order. It was a trial to find "real" names in the letter Q after several generations. And yes, I look at baby names on websites to find some of my names.
I love VV and VF. Happy naming!