Giving the player character the same name as an NPC bugged that NPC when I talked to them, they literally soft locked the game, but that was way back in 1.2 release. And I was also literally playing as that NPC to see how the game would handle it. I imagine naming a custom NPC the player character's name would cause similar problems, but would probably link relevant lore.
Your best bet is to make a new NPC and adjust their relationship to the original NPC, instead of changing an original NPC's relationship with another original NPC.
Asset Ripper GUI. It can easily be found on GitHub if you search for it. If you are just using it for reference material while drawling, you're best bet to save time on finding the files is to export everything and look for the 2D Textures folder. Keep that and delete everything else. You should be able to easily scroll and find all the NPC art.
I was trying to use workflows on ComfyUI a few months back, to see if there was a way to emulate the style, but I needed to pay money to upload LoRas, and my gpu is too old to run their software locally, so I can't do anything for character creation anymore. I envy your talent for drawling.