I just returned to ZenPhoto having used it from when it first launched! Am re-creating the albums I lost way back thanks to finding remnants on my local drive and web host directories.
Created the album 1982 Britain but the directory viewing my FTP files says "1982-England". I'd like to change that if possible as I have another load of photos that relate only to England that year.
(hope this makes sense)

Zenphoto doesn't change names on its own so I guess something got mixed-up
What you see via FTP is the true directory name on the file system.
Zenphoto allows you to set/change the title for those directories (Zenphoto calls them albums) on the backend.
Note that the title is not the same as the name.(as you noticed)

Note that if you create albums via the backend that a name cleaning plugin should be active by default in current versions which will cause "1982 Britain" to become "1982-england" (note the lowercase) actually.

So if you need to re-create anything from a local backup, just uploade the albums as they are via ftp. Zenphoto will not change them afterwards unless you request tha via a special utility.

Thanks for explaining the naming convention. Wondered about the hyphens.