Ah yeah true, you can just write names into the text, if that's where you want to put it. But a little textbox on top was exactly what I was thinking! Or perhaps on the portrait itself. I know people will want to play with it and pick the positions.
Oh goodness this is my bad - you're right, they do look like emotes, but the emotions will indeed change the FRAME of the portrait (the emotes are just squares I put at the corners of the different frames to differentiate them). The actual emotes are the "pop-ups" that appear in little speech bubbles above the character's head.