I think just the opposite. Renaming radicals can’t in any way have influence on later stories, only on previous ones. Only if you decide to change radical name after you already made stories with old one, will you get in trouble. That’s why it’s important to choose the name of the radical wisely, and stick to it. But a name itself, it can be anything you want. Unicorn is as good as Triceratops (I think that was the TF name). Aside from Kanjidamage you can check Reviewing the Kanji for ideas.

In my experience, best suited for radicals are concrete objects and names of the famous people. Avoid names that are too broad or vague in meaning like “by one’s side”or “word”. If you want a radical that is about something always by your side, choose a “cellphone”, and a name of a person who speaks a lot for “word”. This way, if you want, you can retain the original idea of the radical while having something easy to remember for a radical name.

Ssssshhhh, don’t ever say you are not into dinosaurs on TextFugu! :))

I tend to ignore the actual meaning of radicals, because, the way my mind works, I find that knowing the meaning of the parts doesn’t really help me remember the whole Kanji, and in fact, it often throws me off. While I love Heisig’s underlying methodology, a lot of his stories don’t stick in my mind because of a lack of shared experience, (especially the religious stuff) so when he says “Imagine an X”, I can’t, because I don’t have any real feelings/knowledge about X.

What I tend to do, is look at the radical, and try and give it the name which resonates the most with me, and then craft the stories from there. So, what Heisig describes as “a cat’s least three favourite things (rice, dogs, flowers)”, I imagine as “a place cats love to play (rice field, with flowers, and swaying trees)”. I know it might seem self-centred, but I think that tailoring the images to your own subconscious is the best way to make the stories stick.