I agree with the risk assessment of breaking big and well tested software components.
My workaround is to embed unique information in the first 20 chars or so. If you have any hierarchical stuff that you want to occur first, you can use abbreviations. e.g.
Work: Client7423: Project9433 becomes
W:C7424:P9433 and everything remains exposed in the interface as is.
Or, if you work on only a few projects and have really long names
Work: Client7839482394872: Project343234 can become
P343234:Client7839482394872:Work
You just need to differentiate between a few active projects, so just project name may be enough.
Hopefully you don’t have collisions in your project names, but that’s easily another workaround.