Curator does not look at or touch Elasticsearch files. All interactions with indices and snapshots in Elasticsearch are API driven. Curator uses API calls to pull a list of all indices, and then winnows that down using the filters you provide. The action calls (delete, close, open, forcemerge, etc) are also API calls to Elasticsearch. Never directly edit or touch any of the files in /var/lib/elasticsearch. Only use API calls to perform any maintenance functions.
name refers to the index name. It is deriving the index data timestamp from a datestamp present in the index name, e.g. logstash-2017.02.13 analyzed by source: name and timestring: %Y.%m.%d will match a Year.month.day timestamp in the index name.