Names in Excel

MaryWSU please help us help you by providing the sample sheet and more details.
I'm going to go off on a wild guess here and guess that maybe by "names in formulas" you are creating a formula in a table and that it is defaulting to using structured references (i.e. table column names) and you are not used to and hence don't like that. May I suggest that you learn a little about them as they are not too hard to learn and offer many benefits (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/using-structured-references-with-excel-tables-f5ed2452-2337-4f71-bed3-c8ae6d2b276e).
That said, if you want to not default that way (assuming this is what you are even talking about) then you can uncheck "Use table names in formulas" under "Formulas" in Excel Options.