Nobody has asked these questions yet, but I needed to cut down the long waffling description, so questions that may be asked now live here:

Protected across the board?
Yes. Some unique settlers are missing a protected flag in the base game, and some have essential flags instead. Now EVERYONE is equally marked protected. Exceptions are the children, who are flagged protected, but cannot be killed anyway under normal circumstances.
Do remember that if any of these settlers (or cats or robots) are already dead in your game, this mod can't do anything about that. They'll stay dead.

Names for unique settlers?
Yes. So there are mods out there that also do this, but afaik they're quite significant mods containing overhauls or significant changes/additions. This mod is intended to be for light load-orders very close to vanilla. If you want a settler overhaul, definitely run a settler overhaul, not this mod. This mod is better for those playthroughs where settlement building isn't a huge focus, and this is just a light tweaking that makes it feel a little bit better without any real actual additions.

I chose the new names at random. If there are names you'd prefer, you can change them very easily in FO4edit, or honestly feel free to suggest them. I'm not precious about the names, I just want them to be called something other than "Settler".

Allows them to be commandable/moveable/provisioners?
Yes, with caveats. If you install this mid-playthrough, and you've already met the NPCs this touches, it's too late. They'll have their new names and protected status because that's base data, but they won't have new commands because that's script stuff. For the full effects of the mod, install it on a brand new game. 

Ups some stats?
Some of the unique settlers, in locations like TenPines and County Crossing, have ridiculously low stats. I don't know why, they have less than half the pool of health that a normal settler gets access to. So using Abigail Finch as a reference (no reason, she's just first alphabetically), all of those settlers have now had their stats updated to match hers so they somewhat have parity with the rest of the unique settlers.

Restores a cut NPC?
This is nothing fancy, there's just an unused unique NPC associated with TenPines Bluff. I went ahead and added him to the game, along with a bed for him. Whether he's a friend of the siblings, or a third sibling, you can make it up really. He'll automatically assign himself to farm work when it's available and he has no other job, just like the other two.
(No precombine/previs is affected, it's addition only)

What's with the title?
I couldn't really think of anything else, plus the reasoning behind every change or "fix" is that it is mostly the vanilla experience, just... tweaked. Hot take, but I love the base game a lot, and I'm not really all that into overhauls! I wanted to make a mod that tweaked and pushed small parts of Bethesda's vision without changing/redirecting/etc it.

WARNING:
This makes several NPCs who are involved with quests permanently killable by the player. Meaning you can permanently screw up quests if you start lobbing grenades at Ronnie Shaw or decide it's fun to play with mini nukes around Sturges. Make new saves often, as you should be doing anyway. 
I picked protected (over nothing or essential), because I want death to be a possible consequence (especially when playing recklessly), but not offscreen to a single bloatfly. So you can still choose to kill the settlers if that's your thing, or you can sleep soundly knowing finally Deirdre won't be a pile of goo in the morning for no reason.

Whilst some of the flag changes are bugfixes, others are deliberately going against Bethesda's intentions. Without spoilers, a specific unique settler NPC in the game is supposed to be involved in a scene where they die, this mod will interfere with that. Keep that in mind.

Installation:
You must start a new game for this mod to work correctly. If you install it mid-game, new Settler names will show up, but none of the script changes will take effect.
Place it as low priority in your load order, it's adding a name and a flag to NPCs almost nobody touches outside of specific settlement overhauls, it doesn't need to be high priority and if you have any big mods, it's better that they are able to overwrite this one.
You probably shouldn't try to run with major settler/settlement system overhauls and this mod. I haven't tested it with any, and don't have any current plans to. If you do run it with major settler mods, I recommend running those higher priority and letting them overwrite this mod as-and-when, so they can do what they need to do.

I'm gonna reiterate the above in big text because I feel like it's going to be missed:
YOU MUST START A BRAND NEW GAME WITH THIS MOD LOADED TO EXPERIENCE ALL OF THE FEATURES. USING IT ON AN EXISTING GAME WILL ONLY PROVIDE A LIMITED AMOUNT OF EFFECTS.

Compatibility:
It's not going to be compatible with anything that affects these NPCs. If you've got anything that change these NPCs, including ones that change appearance, levels, scaling, stats, at the NPC level, then they're going to conflict.

NOT compatible with the Unofficial Patch. For starters, that patch does fix at least Deirdre I believe, and I wouldn't be surprised if it touched several other NPCs this mod does. Again, if you're using something major like that, this mod should be ignored.

Naturally this is also not compatible with any other mod that provides any of these changes or fixes individually.

Requirements:
Fallout 4
Vault-Tec Workshop
Automatron
Wasteland Workshop