Maybe the reference name can be autogenerated by normalizing the "main value" of the template (see getMainValue method). So if the title of the book is "On the Origin of Species", the reference name would be "on-the-origin-of-species".

The problem I see with this strategy is what to do with references without template. The reference name would be too long. Maybe it can be capped at 20 chars or something.

Or maybe we should use random strings as autogenerated reference names.

For consideration, VisualEditor uses special numeric ones for this purpose (e.g. <ref name=":0">).

However, I think using meaningful strings like "on-the-origin-of-species" (even if not perfect ones; there could be a length cap) is better. ProveIt is a source-editing tool and a meaningful string looks better in wikitext than :0.