Yes.  The only way to get animations is to name the part accordingly in Gmax.  If you have another part that is named the exact same thing, MakeMDL will not appreciate that and might decide you are unworthy of having a working model . . .

I would suggest you name everything something simple, then rename things as you need them.  Just select all parts and click one of the buttons in TagTool that doesn't move.  Something in the "Part Names (Aircraft Only)" section would work great.  But be absolutely sure you save your progress up to this point, as you cannot undo this rename once it is done!!

Now nothing will move at all if you export.  Go through and pick out the parts that you want to have move, and study what TagTool has in there and rename the parts one at a time, exporting and testing occasionally.  Remember, there are some parts that need keyframe animating, and some that don't.  To tell the difference, hover your mouse over the part name in TagTool and look for a bit that says [PARAMETERS].  This will tell you how it moves.

If it says something like "Axis (X Driven)" then you must align the X axis with the rotation or movement.

If it says something like "Key 0 = Off, Key 100 = On" then you must animate it yourself using keyframes.  If you don't know how to do this, I can explain it fairly quickly.