I'm trying to find out a way to build child names from parts of the parent name, I know I can use name with tags, i also tried formula and tried this formula concat(substring([Parent Name],2,2)," wires"), this does not return a result, My goal is the following: If I make the parent name the following: Panel Feeder 3#1 1#6G 1-1/4"EMT, I have three child items created, 1 is the 3#1 wires, then 1#6G and then the 1-1/4"EMT

And then I want to take it a step further by having the # of Wires in my variable auto fill also based on the name

The cleanest way to do this would be to put a bunch of Custom Properties at the parent, and assemble the name from those custom properties.
Something like this for the parent name:
[Circuit Type] [Wire Count]#[Wire Size] [Ground Wire Count]#[Ground Wire Size]G [Conduit Size Display][Conduit Type]
Then the properties exist cleanly available to the child items.
We will check into creating a substring or split command as well for convenience.