Not always, see what happens with lapply:
> x<-matrix(12,1,1)
> names(x)<-"one"
> y<-matrix(1,1,1)
> names(y)<-"one"
> dput(lapply(x,`+`,e2=y))
structure(list(one = structure(13, .Dim = c(1L, 1L))), .Names = "one")
>dput(lapply(x,`+`,e2=1))
structure(list(one = 13), .Names = "one")
Prof. Ripley
How should R deal with matrices that have a 'names' attribute? S (and S+)
did not allow an object to have both dims and names but R does. However,
some R functions copy the dims but not the names to the returned value and
some copy both. I don't see a pattern to it. Is there a general rule for
