Hi @AbdulKhadar 

You said - We’re facing a challenge with our student naming system where we use a format like “Smith_Grade2324” to indicate students’ grades. As students have been promoted to the next grade, we need to update their names to reflect their new grades.

• to borrow an old Irish joke, "If I was going to Dublin I wouldn't start from here ....."

Students have a one to many relationship with many aspects of curriculum and life - their identity is a constant - by adding the grade to the identifier you have given them a different identity for each grade/year. 

I'm struggling to understand why that would be a design choice ....

In my view you need to abandon this folly and de-grade the names asap - there are a host of admin side ways to deal with this in your Student Information System, including setting identifiers within the data that feeds the delivery enrolment or course enrolment .....