ecs:make-object expects per object an alist where the cars are keywords and cdrs are plists keyed by keywords.
Not exactly, it expects a list of component specifiers, each specifier is a list with component name as its car and a plist with component data as its cdr.
You can certainly have a name component.
Sequences indeed do not fit nice into ECS model, you might want an assortment of entities instead (as entities are in fact just indices in component arrays).