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Two things I forgot to mention, when this issue is at it's worst two things happen when the game really starts to fail. First is that I've noticed textures start to load slowly (stuck on low-res, partially loaded versions) until the spike ends, second is that the sound seems to sort of "stack up" on itself, making the normally quiet ambient noise get progressively louder. These may just be a result of the freeze, though, rather than the cause.

I have the same issue, it'll have those little stops and then every now and then it'll bite down and freeze for a good 5-10 seconds, which is essentially a death sentence, given a zombie or two. It only happens in towns and specifically seems to be agitated by looking around a lot/running through them (walking or moving slowly seems to mitigate the lag slightly). Sometimes controls will still function even though everything appears frozen, though the only reliable thing you can manage is continue running in a particular direction (changing direction has unpredictable results). I'm unsure if it's simply the controls "sticking" though judging by the distance I am from where I was when the lag started and where I end up, if I've let go of "w", it seems to register my controls fairly accurately despite the freeze. I've found that using the "advanced flush" command seems to reset whatever issue it has for about 30 seconds before it starts to bog down again. I played Day Z on a really shitty system at first, and while I had to play on what was essentially Nintendo 64 graphics the FPS was fairly constant aside from these spikes, again concentrated in towns. I upgraded the graphics card and still had the spikes, regardless. Then I upgraded my motherboard, RAM, CPU (from a 2.8ghz Dual Core to a quadcore i5), and Hard Drive only to find that I can now run Day Z on fairly high settings, only to die to zombies because whenever I'm in a town I'll have these same lag spikes, which have had little change in severity despite continuous upgrades to my system. This issue seems pretty distinctly related to buildings in some way or another, I get perfect performance everywhere but in towns. Smaller villages have the issue, but are more manageable and airbases are either spread out enough or have few enough structures that I don't notice the effects. This is my biggest issue with the game so far as it essentially forces me to live the life of a hermit in the woods- Sometimes it would be nice to die, legitimately, to game difficulty or a player rather than a lag spike. This is my current system specs, copied through Steam:

I don't think under any condition it's acceptable to view a player who doesn't want to be seen by seeing a nametag. Players who have been identified, who don't wish to be identified, should "lose" their indentity after escaping a certain radius, leaving LOS (outside of about 20m) or persisting beyond a certain timeframe (A couple minutes). This would be established by distinguishing players who willingly ID themselves to someone, and those who have not. The difference between the two is simple- Players may ID other individuals just as the OP has established in his post, however it is temporary- removed once a certain distance between the two players is met (100m~), a certain amount of time has passed(a few minutes), or when line of sight has been lost (outside of a certain small radius, 30m~). The time limitation would be reset upon successful recognition (moving the crossair over the player) Voluntary ID however would be the opposite. Players would tag themselves by selecting a player, making their name visible to the targeted individual. The tag would be susceptible to all the range/visibility descrepancies noted in OP's post and could only be removed by the player who allowed the ID, again, selecting the allowed player and un-tagging themselves. The ID would not disappear immediately, but would instead act as an involuntary ID and be removed once the conditions for Inv. ID removal was met (Time, distance, LoS). Voluntary ID could be emoted, as well, such as a wave or salute as it's nature indicates lack of hostility. (Optionally) Voluntary IDing could also apply an involuntary ID status to any players lurking within a reasonable radius to simulate someone "overhearing", and alternatively players involuntarily IDing a player could communicate that same ID to any other nearby players looking in the same direction. This seems to be a good fix over the guesswork currently involved, while the ideal result would be having static models customizable/unique enough to provide identification on their own. My post here is to just add some extra involvement to the OP's suggestion to make things work more for immersion and combat sensibility.