We tried numbers once upon a time long ago.  We found names to be a lot more apt for people to remember.  If you make the names make some sort of sense and follow some sort of logic, then even if someone does not have the name in front of them they will probably be able to come up with something pretty close by applying the logic  ie, we use owner or previous owner name, plus a direction locator if the owner has multiple fields.

The thing which would really really simplify a system would be if you had a least one position which was always staffed and always staffed by the same person.   Unfortunately that is not really the case here.