The name attribute can be an arbitrary string, so a number is a valid name. Even if you dont link to the anchor yourself, adding a name will make it possible for others to link to it in the future.

I belive anchors were initially designed to be two-way, but it turned out to be more useful to link to headlines rather than links, so links and link targets were seperated.

each link was displayed with a number next to it in parentheses.[1] type the number to go to the link. [1]https://line-mode.cern.ch/www/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

This is probably the correct answer, thanks