As of svn 4578:9209f5db69d3, Hugin supports two schemes for default project names: first-last and folder name. The same defaults are now used for stitched images if the project is not yet saved.
Other uses will prefer other schemes. For example, I'm using Hugin mostly for re-projecting single fisheye images, so neither scheme is convenient, and I use project names (and output prefixes) like "DSC_1234-reproj".
It would be nice to generalize the configuration to let users pick their own patterns. In the Preferences, there can be an edit box where the user can type a pattern as a string using variables, for example:
* [first]-[last]
* [folder]
* [first]-reproj
* pano-[date]-[time]
The Digikam rename dialog uses a similar scheme, plus a fancy function notation to do things like upper/lower case, so perhaps there code or spec that can be reused.
See discussion on mailing list http://