You are correct that the artifactId helps identify the project.
The name is simply a human-readable “friendly” name. It is not required for a basic setup.
From the Maven documentation,
artifactId: The artifactId is generally the name that the project is known by. Although the groupId is important, people within the group will rarely mention the groupId in discussion … It, along with the groupId, create a key that separates this project from every other project in the world (at least, it should 🙂 ). Along with the groupId, the artifactId fully defines the artifact’s living quarters within the repository.