They had names before and emotes worked since, well, the emotes patch.
I always salute the FrontSol officer after they pay me. And accusedly point at the Apex agent and demand to speak their manager.
Did the other NPC in a station not have names before? I seem to remember that they did.
For me at least on PC it was only the mission-giver and interactable ones but not the randos before. For example, people asleep on benches or having the conversations in the walkways. I can target them all and they all have names now this morning